OfLara Sirignano
The accusation of the Palermo prosecutor’s office: 33 personal trips in a few months. The wiretaps: «They can suck about embezzlement..». The driver was accused of the scam: «Dozens of false institutional missions»
L’blue car she became a sort of taxi used to take the hired domestic worker from one house to another, however, in the political staff, the faithful of the secretariat, relatives, friends and even the cat to be visited by the vet.
33 times in a few months, in 2023, Gianfranco Miccichèhistoric Sicilian leader of Forza Italia, would have used for decidedly non-institutional purposes Audi which, also on the basis of a rule supported by him when he was at the top of the Regional Assembly, is assigned to the former presidents of the Sicilian Region who are still deputies to carry out their functions. For the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office who discovered it in the middle of an investigation into Sicilian politics, the embezzlement is evident. For this reason the prosecutors coordinated by prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia, they requested and obtained from the investigating judge for the parliamentarian residence ban in Cefalùthe town where the deputy actually lives.
Lresidence obligation in Palermo and Monreale, however, theMiccichè’s driver and regional employee Maurizio Messina, investigated for fraud. With the approval of the former president, who responds in competition, he would have declared 76 work missions never done, pocketing an allowance of around 10 thousand euros and would pretend to be on duty while she was at a friend’s house or playing Bingo, thus receiving full pay despite the reduced hours.
«Do you want to get two arancini? I’m here from Gallizza.” At 10.57am, on 17 June 2023, not knowing he was being intercepted, Miccichè called his daughter to find out if she wanted some food. Through the girl his wife asks him to check if «Totò (friend of the couple, ed) has fish.”
«I’m having the arancini and now we’ll go… what do you want? What fish do you want?”he replies before heading off with the blue car to the fish shop. Only one of the 33 cases of embezzlement contested by the prosecutors who ascertained that the former president he was accompanied to take care of personal things, he had cocaine and food brought to him purchased by his friend Mario Ferro, the chef who was later investigated for drug dealing as part of an investigation which revealed that the deputy had turned to him several times to purchase narcotic substances.
The blue car went up and down between Palermo and Cefalù also to get to the parliamentarian medicines and various objects. On one occasion she would be employed for take the house cat to the vet. In another to transport petrol to give to the parliamentarian’s wife who ran out of fuel. «Paradigmatic episodes – writes the investigating judge who speaks of “arbitrary and completely personalistic management of the car” – not only of the fraud underlying the various complaints, but also of the endorsement with which the deputy he allows his family members and collaborators to give instructions in an unscrupulous manner to say the least in Messina for the use of the company car in order to take care of tasks relating exclusively to the private and family sphere, from the transport of an animal to that of some plants from a nursery located in the Catania area to the home in Cefalù which however did not materialize only due to the contingent lack of capacity of the car”.
In short, the Audi was too small to transport what the politician’s wife wanted. After the investigation into the pusher chef, however, agitation begins among the parliamentarian’s staff. AND they realize that the comings and goings cannot continue because Finance is checkingor just the use of Audi. «Don’t worry, regarding embezzlement, precisely, na puonnu (they can do it, ed) suck highly”: Miccichè said, intercepted, to one of his collaborators, worried that, after the publication of the news on the investigation, the attention of the investigators was focused precisely on his use of the vehicle. «But there’s no doubt about it, come on! Come on, if only they listened to all the times we paid attention to the use of the car, but I really hope they listened to the phone calls, I swear to you, I did nothing but tell him: ‘Please, please'”, she said. And Miccichè: «More, in fact».
But for the investigating judge the conversation is just “a clumsy attempt to make the use of the company car appear correct”. In a previous conversation the same collaborator, speaking with the politician’s factotum, said: «It’s not that Maurizio (the deputy’s driver, ed) can go there (to Cefalù, ed) to bring the drugs, now we have to forget about this system…”.
And that there was tension for the investigation we can also gather from the intercepted conversations of Miccichè’s driver which prove, according to the judge, “some retrospective references to the previous casual modus operandi of using it”. «I broke my neck…, finished America, more everyone (the package is over, ed)», commented Messina. «Home, church and office, we can’t do anything else, finished everything he did before… maybe a little more bullshit… I’m cutting ties with everyone, he said to me (tired, ed)», he blurted out.
Emblematic phrases for magistrates who they presented the bill to the deputy and seized over 2 thousand euros from himthe equivalent of the illegitimate cost of the blue car.
May 20, 2024 (modified May 20, 2024 | 11:11)
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
