Rita Cavallaro
June 15, 2024
«The content of the ordinance lends itself to being challenged, at least from my point of view; we will go to the Review”. The lawyer Stefano Savi, defender of the president of the Liguria Region, promises to fight. Giovanni Toti not only does not intend to resign from his institutional position, but is adamant in maintaining his total innocence and non-involvement in the crimes alleged against him by the Genoa Prosecutor’s Office, which opposed the revocation of his house arrest and is proceeding with an investigation to corruption that has been going on for four years in order to find even minimal evidence against Toti. In total agreement with the accusers, Paola Faggioni’s investigating judge made her ruling yesterday, which in the order with which she rejected the request for revocation or attenuation of the precautionary measure of house arrest, justified her decision to keep the governor imprisoned on three arguments capable of supporting the “concrete and current danger of recurrence of similar criminal conduct”.
The first is that we will vote for the Region in 2025, the second is that Toti does not resign and the third concerns the fact that the president persists in declaring himself innocent. The investigating judge writes: «It is clear, also in light of recent investigative developments, that the danger remains that the suspect may repeat similar conduct – moreover considered fully legitimate and correct by the aforementioned – in view of the next regional electoral competitions in 2025 (or any further electoral competitions), for which the aforementioned had, moreover, already started the relevant fundraising”. The judge refers specifically to those 40 thousand euros of liberal donations, regularly registered as electoral financing by the Toti Committee, received by the entrepreneur Aldo Spinelli, the one who admitted to having financed all the parties, including the Democratic Party. Yet the transfers declared by the governor are considered payment for some favors, including the renewal of the thirty-year concession of the Rinfuse Terminal to the Spinelli group. And if Toti were released, the judge claims, he would resume with that quid pro quo, because «from the investigative findings summarized in the latest notes of the GdF of 04.24.2024 and 06.12.2024. it emerged that on 04.14.2024 an electoral fundraising dinner was organized by the President of the Region Giovanni Toti, in Genoa at Villa Lo Zerbino, for the benefit of the Toti Liguria Committee, in view of the next regional elections in 2025″.
Finally, the investigating judge adds that «this danger becomes even more concrete when one considers that the aforementioned (Toti, ed.) still continues to hold the same functions and public positions, with the consequent possibility that they will once again be put at the service of private interests in change of financing”.
