PESCARA. Acquitted for not having committed the crime. This is what the judges of the court decided Vincenzo Ciamponithe former general director of the ASL of Pescara, on trial for corruption for the exercise of the function.
The investigation was the tragic one that led the then director of the psychiatric service, Sabatino Trottato take his own life in prison on the same day he was arrested (7 April 2021) for the scandal of extra-hospital psychiatric residences: a contract worth 11 million euros which, according to the prosecution, was piloted by Trotta in favor of Coop The Rondine of Lanciano.
Of the various defendants, only Ciamponi’s position remained suspended after that Domenico Mattucci And Luigia Dolce (president and collaborator of the same Coop) decided, at the end of the investigation, to negotiate the sentence (two years each with suspended sentence). But Trotta’s death marked the fate of this proceeding, at least for the role of Ciamponi who signed that award, despite the alleged irregularities found by the prosecutor’s office and supported by the prosecutors Anna Benigni And Luca Sciarretta.
The public prosecution asked for 3 years of imprisonment for Ciamponi, but the speeches of his defenders, the lawyers Massimo Galasso And Gianfranco Iadecola, highlighted the lack of that essential evidence for conviction. «Our requests were totally accepted», states Galasso. We are satisfied because Ciamponi’s involvement in that corruption episode was recognized. Unfortunately, acquittal will not restore to Ciamponi the reputational damage he has suffered.” He was accused of having pocketed, in return for the green light for that contract, 8,000 euros from Mattucci through Trotta, for the purchase of a used car for his son. «The public prosecution has not assessed», Iadecola stated after the speech, «the unreliability of the primary source, Trotta, who talks with Mattucci and Dolce: Trotta’s was a fraudulent operation against the Coop». And therefore without Trotta, the trial could only have this epilogue. Added to this is the passage of money that the investigators following Ciamponi and Trotta had identified during the route that took the two to the dealership. But the finance department, which could have intervened in flagrante delicto, did not do so in order not to compromise the investigation and the precautionary measure already filed. A passage underlined by the defense which, during the arguments, insisted a lot on the lack of “genetic autonomy of the joint call of the two” for which the statements of Mattucci and Dolce, who “drink from the same source (Trotta ed), cannot be used as the basis for a conviction”, said the defenders. And so it was.
«I’m happy and relieved», commented Ciamponi, «it’s the end of a nightmare. I shook hands with the wrong people. They introduced me to people I shouldn’t have known. Maybe I made a mistake in returning to my city, it would have been better to stay in Milan. Yet I did well in Pescara, unfortunately I found myself in this situation. From tomorrow I will go back to doing what I have always done.”
