LThe former board of directors of Ase fights against the revocation of the office decided by the extraordinary commissioner of Manfredonia. The former president Michele Centolathe former CEO Massimo Leone and former vice president Lucia Murgolo they filed a document in court asking for 300 thousand euros in damages. In their opinion, the revocation of April 24th would be illicit. “A surreal case,” he commented to the Immediate, Lion. “We also asked for the suspension of the provision because the commissioner, when making the appointment, did not take into account the statute and civil code. The appointment of the administrator must be made through a public and non-public tender procedure intuitu personae“. And again: “The forfeiture of April 24 occurred with immediate proceedings without cross-examination.”
The commissioner appointed the man from Bari as sole administrator Marcello Danisi, but according to Leone a public notice had to be made. Furthermore, a series of complaints were made against the former board of directors. Among these is the question concerning Michele and Raffaele Fatone, father and son, arrested in “Hands off” and currently confined respectively in prison and under house arrest.
Fatone senior was also at the center of a labor dispute concerning an action aimed at the recognition of superior duties. For the commissioner, the action taken by the administrator who not only remained was of “particular gravity”. “helpless with respect to the serious situation of illegality existing within the company’s personnel organisation but decided to reconcile the labor case brought by Michele Fatone despite the latter’s defeat in the first instance judgment, according to the economic and regulatory terms described above, effectively realizing pacts and agreements entered into outside of any paradigm of legality with subjects including political ones, one of whom was reached with a precautionary measure (primarily preventing Fatone from having to pay the company the legal costs he had been condemned to pay in the first instance), as revealed by the Hands Off investigation”.
“The Fatones? But I couldn’t have known that there was an investigation – commented Leone to our newspaper -. I cannot act on suspicion.” Furthermore, they point out in the document, the issue “relates to a dispute initiated prior to the establishment of the Board of Directors”.
Again according to the writer, “the legal events that concerned the employee are in no way connected to the transaction and the corporate advantage connected to it, nor was a conversation ever recorded between the employee and any of the members of the Board of Directors in the published wiretaps that he was and remains completely unrelated to the criminal matter.”
Disputes also about additional compensation, for Leone “specious accusations. Between the fixed fee and additional money it comes to 52 thousand euros per year for three. But what are we talking about?”. In the document they write that “the remuneration of directors invested with particular roles, in accordance with the Articles of Association, is established by the Board of Directors, after hearing the opinion of the board of auditors”.
The document filed with the civil court of Bari is of 23 pages: “The decree that is being challenged today – we read – was adopted outside the meeting by the majority shareholder, the Municipality of Manfredonia, which, apart from the procedure provided for by the statute, in the same decree, proceeds with the revocation and also with the appointment of a new administrator, without convening the meeting, acknowledging having consulted the minority shareholder Municipality of Vieste and without respect, in relation to the appointment of the planned public tender procedure”.
Then again: “None of the complaints made by the Municipality to the Board of Directors refer to bad management of the board of directors. It must then be highlighted that, considering that the revoked body came into operation on 06/16/2023, holding the first Board of Directors on that date, the judgment of alleged bad management, contained in the provision now contested, would concern just 9 months, an absolutely unsuitable period for formulating any performance evaluation which, as will be explained below, in any case is an absolutely unfounded judgment, devoid of documentary support. Indeed, it appears exactly the opposite, that is, that the Board of Directors has already given ample proof of competence and effectiveness in administrative management in 9 months, starting the solution to problems that no administrator in previous years had faced (selection system, purifier, transfer ramp waste, etc.)”.
According to Leone, Centola and Murgolo, the decision to appoint a new administrator would have been “confusing and arbitrary” and “it cannot be justified even in consideration of the suspicion of serious irregularities, as the Municipality of Manfredonia itself simultaneously presented a report of serious irregularities pursuant to art. 2409 cc at the Court, against the already revoked Board of Directors; essentially the Municipality, in the person of the Extraordinary Commissioner, first revoked for just cause the Board of Directors of the subsidiary ASE SpA and then asked the Judge to ascertain whether there are serious irregularities to support the revocation for just cause, thus demonstrating way of not having clear ideas or, better said, demonstrating that the revocation of the Board of Directors had rather a different and ultronary purpose, that is to immediately assume control of the management, through a trustee administrator not referenced, nor selected with the procedure provided for in the Articles of Association, which confirms the inferred conflict of interest of the shareholder, given the pursuit of an interest other than that of the company”.
Finally, complaints about the lack of dialogue: “At the end of October 2023, the municipal council Rotice she was voted out of confidence and the Municipality was placed under commissionership in December. Having lost the political-administrative references, the Board of Directors promptly asked to be able to consult with the Prefectural Commissioner who, however, never intended to grant any hearing to the Board of Directors itself, nor interfaced in any other way with the Board of Directors”. A long legal battle awaits.
