BRINDISI – The appeal process against Teodoro Contardi, former director of Brindisi Multiservizi, accused of embezzlement will have to be re-run. The Court of Cassation ordered the annulment with referral for new trial to another section of the Court of Appeal of Lecce, of the sentence of one year and eight months of imprisonment filed in September 2023. In the first instance, the court of Brindisi had sentenced the accountant, defended by the lawyer Livio Di Noi, to two years, with a suspended sentence.
The story dates back to a period of time between 2010 and 2023 and concerns the alleged payment, with money from the in-house company of the Municipality of Brindisi, of fines for violations of the Highway Code, towards politicians and professionals.
According to the accusation, Contardi embezzled company money, using it to “satisfy the interests of third parties”. These are 168 people to whom the former manager of the subsidiary allegedly paid the fines. The sums, on the basis of the accusatory theorem, “withdrawn from the company coffers by employees in charge of the administration office and delivered to others who then made the payment as a settlement”. In short, the economic resources would have been used for purposes other than the public interest.
At first instance, the Municipality of Brindisi joined the civil action, obtaining the right to compensation for damages, to be quantified in civil proceedings. The Court of Appeal recognized the general mitigating circumstances in favor of the accused, re-establishing the two-year sentence imposed at first instance as one year and eight months.
In the appeal to the Court of Cassation, the lawyer Di Noi disputes the lack of evidence regarding the fact that the beneficiaries “rather than lodge an appeal had asked for the favor that the dispute report be canceled and/or revoked and that they had all requested this on the basis of the ‘exercise of the power of self-defense’.
The defense points out that “all the fines were paid into the account of the Municipality of Brindisi and then repaid by the beneficiaries, requested by the Prosecutor’s Office to avoid being investigated”. Furthermore, it should be noted that Contardi “is not the hierarchical superior of the traffic assistants, he has not canceled any fines, he has only paid the fines erroneously raised by his own employees or issued to his own employees” and “he is not in charge of a public service”. The financial damage to the Municipality of Brindisi would be non-existent, as the fines were paid twice. Again on the basis of the appeal, the damage to image is also non-existent, “as there is no functional relationship between the accused and the Municipality of Brindisi”.
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