The earthquake that shook the Palazzo della Regione in Genoa to its foundations is also making its tremors felt in the province of La Spezia and in particular in the municipality of Porto Venere, where, in reality, everything started.
In fact, in the early hours of the morning, the La Spezia prosecutor’s office made four arrests and notified six acts of interdiction from business activity in the provincial territory. The outcome of the investigation is communicated by the chief prosecutor Antonio Patrono himself, with a press note in which he explains first of all that he considers the disclosure of information regarding the commission of crimes against the public administration to be in the public interest, without prejudice to the presumption of innocence of the people subjected to preliminary investigations, as well as the possibility for them to assert their non-involvement in the crimes.
The investigations directed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of La Spezia, carried out in coordination with related investigations of the Genoese Prosecutor’s Office and conducted by the Financial Police, have led “to hypothesize, on the basis of serious indications of guilt, the crimes of corruption and disturbed freedom of auctions for whom house arrest was applied to Matteo Cozzani (former mayor of Porto Venere and head of cabinet of the president of the Liguria Region, also under house arrest), to his brother Filippo Cozzani (entrepreneur active in the road signs and sales sector of wholesale drinks) and to the brothers Raffaele and Mirko Paletti (Milan entrepreneurs, directors of companies that also operate in the Municipality of Porto Venere)”.
However, six other entrepreneurs were hit by the precautionary interdictory measure of the ban on exercising professions, businesses or management offices of legal entities carrying out business activities, including Francesco Fiorino (legal representative of Europa Park, former deputy head of the mayor’s cabinet della Spezia and new member of the Board of Directors of Atc), Giovanni Olcese and Ivan Pitto (entrepreneurs active in the advertising sector), Saverio Cecchi (president of Confindustria Nautica in Genoa and legal representative of the company I Saloni Nautici), Alessandro Campagna (commercial director of the Salone Nautico) and Massimo Gianello (president of the Committee of the Villages of the Palio del Golfo and of the company owned by the Municipality of Lerici, Sviluppo Turismo Lerici).
The investigators focused on events that occurred in the period between 2022 and 2024: “when the former mayor, thanks to his position in the Municipality of Porto Venere and his role in the Liguria Region, would have facilitated the entrepreneurs involved in various ways – writes the Prosecutor’s Office of La Spezia – in exchange for favors consisting in having them commission work or supplies to his family’s businesses, legally represented by his brother Filippo Cozzani but, in fact, also managed by him”.
According to the investigations carried out by the Fiamme Gialle under the coordination of the Prosecutor’s Office of La Spezia and Genoa, “some of the entrepreneurs involved, in exchange for his favours, would have carried out financing for the political party of which Matteo Cozzani was an exponent”, and would have “offered in numerous occasions free hotel hospitality to him and to other people indicated by him”.
Among the episodes contested against the former mayor of Porto Venere as “favors” is “the tender for the development, through concession, of the property housing the former “Michela Ravecca” nursery school in Porto Venere, adjacent to the Grand Hotel owned by the Paletti family, commissioned by the then mayor in order to benefit the Palettis through the inclusion in the tender of a restrictive requirement that only they could satisfy, namely the availability of a large room for gym use, located in the center of Porto Venere”.
In addition to some episodes of abuse of office and forgeries, various conducts of the former mayor were also contested “aimed at facilitating the construction of a bathing establishment on the Palmaria island by the same Milanese entrepreneurs, through strong personal interest and administrative activity ad hoc (council resolution renouncing pre-emption on the area by the Park, council resolution which, by making use of the so-called “margins of flexibility” allows the construction of the works, including swimming pools, with a simple agreed building permit, avoiding more complex and participatory procedures…)”.
Events, those of the tender for the valorisation of the former “Ravecca” nursery school and that of the bathing establishment in the Carlo Alberto area, on which exponents of the current opposition (read here) of the Porto Venere municipal council had strongly expressed themselves .
At the same time as the execution of the precautionary measures orders, the Financial Police is carrying out searches in Genoa, Milan, La Spezia and Porto Venere and the preventive seizure of approximately 215,000 euros. The Forestry Carabinieri also collaborated in the investigations, for the part of their competence, which carried out the preventive seizure of the former nursery school in Porto Venere and the construction site of the bathing establishment in Palmaria.
