The Municipality of Bari wins the tug-of-war with the Il Veliero company for the concession of the Pane e pomodoro beach but the ruling from the Council of State arrives too late to allow the kiosk to be reactivated by the summer. We will therefore talk about it next year, about being able to see the bar facing the sea open again and for now we will have to settle for a quick safety measure, after the structure was recently further vandalized.
The sentence was published on 11 June and confirmed the one with which the TAR, in 2022, had deemed legitimate the revocation of the concession to Il Veliero, decided by virtue of an anti-mafia interdiction issued by the Prefecture. According to the DDA, the company – for some years also awarded the concession for Torre Quetta – was in fact managed by Orlando Malanga (companion of the owner Rosa Di Modugno), believed to be close to the Japigia clans. Malanga is also under investigation in the Internal Code investigation, his position is among those still being evaluated by the Prosecutor’s Office.
The history of the anti-mafia interdiction was initially linked to the revocation of the concession but today, the Council of State clarified, the revocation provision ordered by the Municipality in 2020 “lives a life of its own”. It means that the administration has every right to consider the fiduciary relationship with that company to have ceased and that decisions taken in self-defense are not bound by judicial measures.
Il Veliero, in fact, tried in every way to counteract that choice and return to managing Pane e Tomato, also obtaining a judicial administration order, following which the company was deemed cleaned up and the anti-mafia ban revoked.
But all this was not enough for the administrative judges. Indeed, to weigh in favor of the Municipality’s choices, there would also be the arrears of Il Veliero in the payment of state property fees for 2018 and 2020 and the fact that the construction of the structure that housed the bar had not been authorized.
Although these complaints had been expressed by the body since 2020, while the various trials were underway it was never possible to demolish what remains of the kiosk, which remained above the beach like a crumbling ruin. At this point the administration can put the beach back up for tender and take over the bar. However, it cannot be reactivated before next year.
