REGGIO CALABRIA – After the “Miramare” affair, although the Court of Cassation in November 2023 annulled without postponement the conviction for abuse of office issued by the Court of Appeal of Reggio Calabria against Guseppe Falcomatà, the new judicial tile for the mayor. That is to say the“Ducale” operation“, where he is accused of the hypothesis of political-mafia electoral exchange, with the request for arrest against him which was not made because the DDA did not consider “all the conditions legitimizing the precautionary measure fully integrated”, could jeopardize his political future based on a possible candidacy for the office of president of the Region. Let it be clear, the presumption of innocence also applies in this case, according to which an accused is considered not guilty until finally convicted. Anyway in the Democratic Party they say they are confident that this time too the mayor will be able to clarify his position, so much so that in the last few hours the metropolitan Democratic Party has issued a press note where it is underlined that “the Democratic Party has always respected and respects the work of the judiciary engaged in the front line to repress all forms of illegality. We have full faith in the Reggio judiciary and in its action aimed at defeating the cancer of the ‘ndrangheta which grips our land and prevents its development”.
An operation which in the Democratic Party, in addition to Falcomatà, also involved the city councilor, Giuseppe Sera (always from the same party). In the note, the secretariat of the metropolitan Democratic Party is sure that both will demonstrate their total non-involvement in the facts contested in the competent bodies”. An affair which, in addition to the two representatives of Palazzo San Giorgio, saw the involvement of the regional councilor of FdI, Giuseppe Neri.
An operation, we remember, which dealt a severe blow to the Ndrangheta gang Araniteshegemonic in the Sambatello territory, where among the various crimes that were accused of those arrested, mafia-type association and extortion aggravated by the mafia method, corruption for an act contrary to official duties, material and ideological falsehood committed by a public official in public documents there would also be a crime electoral, with references to the renewal of the Regional Council of Calabria (in 2020 and 2021) and of the Municipal Council of Reggio Calabria (in 2020).
In the meantime, the parliamentary anti-mafia commission chaired by Chiara Colosimo has requested the documents of the investigation on the alleged conditioning of the elections of Regional council of Calabria and the city council of Reggio between 2020 and 2021. As has already happened in similar investigations, the Commission moved to acquire the documentation of the investigation conducted by the ROS under the coordination of the Reggio Calabria prosecutor’s office. The request for access to the documents emerged during yesterday’s meeting of the Bureau.
