The governor of Lombardy Attilio Fontana he attacked the Genoa investigation involving his Ligurian colleague Giovanni Toti (in the photo, the two). Responding to questions from Italian agencies on the sidelines of a visit to Washington, he observed that the protests appear “less and less comprehensible and increasingly stretched, increasingly the result of an interpretation rather than a concrete reality”. And he defined house arrest as a “bizarre measure” for the times and for a crime that would have continued from 2020 to 2022.
“Trawling? A not very legal but very effective expression”, he replied.
“Reading illegitimately, as everyone does, the papers in the newspapers seems to me to say that the protests are less and less understandable and more and more stretched and more and more the result of an interpretation rather than a concrete reality”, said Fontana. “I am convinced – he explained – that house arrest (for Toti, ed.) is a bizarre measure for a crime that allegedly began in 2020 and continued in 2021 and 2022, with a precautionary measure requested at the end of 2023 and reached May 2024: let’s say that I would not present it as a degree thesis to represent how the judicial procedure actually works in Italy”.
“Also because – he continued – one wonders ‘but if you know that that certain governor is committing a crime in 2021 and then you know that he will commit it again in 2022 and you let him commit it in 2023 too…’. Well a It appears to me that there would perhaps be some duty on the part of the public prosecutor to prevent the crime from continuing to be perpetrated”.
Still speaking about the Genoa investigation, Fontana then declared that “there are crimes that do not exist and which are not prosecuted and instead there are crimes that exist and are not traditionally prosecuted. It is a curious thing… we should introduce the non-indictable crime into the procedural code”.
The governor of Lombardy then made a general observation. “We return – he explained – to the basic issue: if we do not want politics to be financed by the public or we accept that it is financed by the private sector, and it is normal for the private sector to finance those who have ideas and propose choices more in line with their sensitivities, or let’s say that politics cannot even be financed by the private sector and then the door opens to the very rich.
