The investigating judge of Catania, accepting the request of the District Prosecutor’s Office, closed an investigation for complicity in corruption in which the deputy and former regional councilor of the League Luca Sammartino and the former manager of the Asp Etnea, now commissioner of that of Palermo, Daniela Faraoni.
At the center of the investigation are contracts for the management of software at the ASP of Catania. The file was opened after a complaint from the entrepreneur Gianluca Dova who denounced his brother Marco for the alleged relationships with the regional deputy Luca Sammartino, hypothesizing that the two would have had an agreement which provided for hiring in exchange for direct assignments to the company. Daniela Faraoni was investigated because, when she was the administrative director of the ASP Catania, she had signed the resolution at the center of the investigation. For the Catania Prosecutor’s Office, however, the elements collected were not sufficient to support the accusation in court and requested and obtained from the investigating judge the dismissal of the file, in which two other managers of the Etnea Asp were also investigated. The Prosecutor’s Office eliminated the position of the entrepreneur Marco Dova, transferring the documents to Pomezia for territorial jurisdiction.
Sammartino, a strong man of the League on the island, elected with around 21 thousand preferences in the 2022 regional elections, being the second most voted in Sicily, last April 17 resigned as vice-president of the Sicilian Region and as councilor for Agriculture after who was suspended from public duties by the Catania investigating judge as part of the ‘Pandora’ investigation in which he is investigated for two alleged cases of corruption: an exchange of favors to obtain votes for the then candidate of the Democratic Party in the 2020 European elections, Caterina Chinnici, totally unrelated to the investigation, and for contacts with two Carabinieri to acquire confidential information on any investigations against him and technical reclamation in the premises of his secretariat.
