The statute of limitations has arrived, accrued on appeal, for the former councilor for the environment of the municipality of Andria Francesco Lotito, arrested at dawn on 11 December 2013 on charges of having pocketed a bribe to control the municipal waste disposal contract. Frederick city. Two years earlier the municipality of Andria had switched to door-to-door waste collection and the service had been awarded to the Sangalli company of Monza. And it was from the Monza Prosecutor’s Office that the investigation began which led to several arrests in December 2013, including that of Lotito, already elected in the ranks of the PDL and appointed councilor by the then mayor Nicola Giorgino. According to the accusation, the former councilor pocketed a bribe to facilitate the award to the Sangalli company. The investigation, in the meantime transferred from the Monza Prosecutor’s Office to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office after an exception presented by Lotito’s lawyers, led to a 6-year prison sentence at first instance in 2017. Lotito has always refused the plea deal. Now, on appeal, the statute of limitations has expired. The former councilor had already been acquitted of the charge of extortion in another proceeding (initiated by the Trani Prosecutor’s Office) concerning the company that before Sangalli managed the waste service in Andria, namely AIMERI.
The former councilor from Andria is assisted by the lawyers Domenico Di Terlizzi and Francesco Di Marzio, who in a note spoke of a “tombstone in the criminal case” in which their client “has always and from the beginning proclaimed himself innocent despite the serious accusations that were made against him.” «Moreover – we continue to read – it was immediately clear that it was a surreal affair when two different prosecutors’ offices, Trani and Monza, respectively contested two accusatory hypotheses which were irreconcilable and conflicting. Trani, on the one hand, believed that the Aimeri Ambiente company had been favored in the tender, while Monza in the same tender, on the other hand, believed that the favored company was Sangalli. Our client, despite having always had faith in the judiciary, had to wait many years to see the final word on this sad procedural matter which caused all the people involved a great deal of suffering, including personal suffering.”
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