“I haven’t committed any crime. Now I’m thinking about arriving at the prepared interrogation to demonstrate the correctness of my actions“. He is studying the papers waiting for the interrogation which should be in two weeks, Giovanni Toti, the governor of Liguria has been under house arrest since May 7th in the investigation by the Genoa Prosecutor’s Office for corruption. But in the meantime he delivers a few words to his lawyer Stefano Savi, with whom he is developing the defense strategy, to say that it has nothing to do with what is being contested against him by the magistrates, according to whom he received funding of over 74 thousand euros paid to his Committee by Spinelli entrepreneurs in exchange for practices and solutions that could facilitate their business.
Locked in his home in Ameglia, in the province of La Spezia, Toti is spending his time reading the documents and working in preparation for the face-to-face meeting with the prosecutors led by the Prosecutor Nicola Piacente. Of course, he would have preferred quicker time to give the examination before the prosecutors, but he “accepts” the prosecutor’s decision and, based on the outcome of the interrogation, will ask for the precautionary measure to be revoked. If the discussion were to slip further, it would become very important for him to find a solution to be able to have a first-hand exchange, that is, to find a way to communicate with his political contacts and with the advisors of his majority in Piazza De Ferrari. Meanwhile, in these days of waiting, he is preparing to clarify the charges point by point. Because he, this is his version, regarding the renewal of the thirty-year concession for the Bulk Terminal did not act “one way” to favor Aldo Spinelli, also under house arrest. His intervention, which is in short the explanation he will provide to the investigators, was not only in line with what the port authority had proposed, including the 30 years, but also had the aim of finding a balanced solution that took into account all interests in order to avoid further clashes between terminal operators. Furthermore, he will add, the construction of the breakwater and the filling of the port’s comb would have in any case called into question the Bulk Terminal (the plan is to transfer it to Savona) and led to the start of a public tender procedure.
In addition to this, Toti will argue in his defense that the entrepreneur, as is now established and as he himself has put in the minutes before the investigating judge Paola Faggioni, has always subsidized all the exponents of the constitutional arc and to achieve his goals he has always had a “hammering” technique: he asked, requested and asked again, in an attempt to get what he wanted. This technique was also used for the Punta dell’Olmo operation: his was a response (“I’ll see what I can do”, according to the entrepreneur) to silence Spinelli’s “insistence” and nothing more, as it was common ground that there were no conditions to privatize the beach. And then, one of the key points is that the money received, except perhaps for some electoral advertising, has always been paid to the Committee in compliance with the law, in clear terms. Finally, in addition to rejecting the charges regarding the Savona landfill, he will also talk about the alleged electoral corruption: he knew nothing about the votes of the Riese people. He was only a guest at an electoral lunch: he was invited and he went.
“I exclude that it had any kind of use,” Savi was keen to point out. The lawyer in fact clarified, regarding the lunch in Monte Carlo that Spinelli spoke about to the judge, that “Toti and his wife had gone” to the principality “for family reasons, that the car was theirs and that” the entrepreneur “he invited them for a quick breakfast. The governor paid for the night in the hotel out of his own pocket”, he concluded.
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