The accusatory system of the Glicine operation holds up before the GUP, for which the judge has ordered one hundred indictments, 25 abbreviated and 1 referral to the Assize Court
CROTONE – One hundred defendants sent to trial, including big names in regional politics, another 25 admitted to the abbreviated trial while only one, the Papanice boss Domenico Megna, will have to appear before the Court of Assizes of Catanzaro to answer for murder. There are three trials resulting from the mega request of the Catanzaro DDA against 126 people who ended up under accusation as part of the investigation which a year ago led to the mega Glicine-Acheronte operation, with which the sophisticated criminal interests of the Megna gang were revealed, able to recruit German hackers to move six-figure sums through clandestine online trading, and light would have been shed on an alleged business committee linked to politics and regional institutions whose excessive power would have materialized between 2014 and 2020 .
The decision is made by the district judge Sara Merlini, who did not alter the prosecution system at all by arranging the three trials for all the contested charges. The position of the former regional councilor Enzo Sculco, who had been removed, will be decided tomorrow: he is considered the dominus of an alleged business committee whose members are already indicted for all the facts contested in the request signed by the acting district attorney functions Vincenzo Capomolla, by the deputies Domenico Guarascio and Paolo Sirleo and by the prosecutor of the ordinary prosecutor’s office of Crotone Alessandro Rho. The aggravating mafia charge (which had been excluded by the investigating judge in the precautionary custody order) remains standing, even in the political context, in relation to the criminal association aimed at an impressive series of crimes against the public administration. The trial with the ordinary rite will begin on October 9th before the Criminal Court of Crotone. In judgment, as “promoters”, the former governor of Calabria Mario Oliverio, the former regional councilor and former parliamentarian of the Democratic Party Nicola Adamo, the former private secretary of Oliverio and former councilor for public works of the Municipality of Crotone Giancarlo Devona, the former regional councilor and former provincial secretary of the Dem of Reggio Calabria Sebi Romeo, but also the former councilor of the Municipality of Mesoraca Ernesto Iannone. The pactum sceleris, according to the prosecution, provided that Sculco, leader of the “DemoKratici” movement, would support the political group attributable to Oliverio in exchange for support for his daughter Flora, the former regional councilor, who was also sent to trial .
Also on trial is the former vice-president of the regional council Antonella Stasi, who must answer, together with two carabinieri serving at the provincial command of Crotone, Antonio Cono Tropiano and Roberto Maggio, for illegal access to the police force database. With the role of “participants” in the criminal association, the former mayor of Cirò Marina and former president of the Province of Crotone Nicodemo Parrilla, the manager of the Province of Crotone and former manager of the Municipality Giuseppe Germinara, the former commissioner and general director of Aterp Calabria Ambrogio Mascherpa, the Aterp manager Nicola Santilli, the managers of the ASP of Crotone Francesco Masciari and Francesco Salvatore Bennardo, respectively administrative director and asset manager at the time of the disputed facts, the former president of Ance of Crotone Giovanni Mazzei.
The pact provided for a series of fiduciary roles, appointments and hirings, of an exclusively clientelistic nature, at various public bodies. This is also thanks to the identification of welcome managers, in particular Giuseppe Germinara, designated, with a fiduciary role, to lead the Public Works sector of the Municipality of Crotone, on the recommendation of Sculco, despite there being a regular winner of the competition, Elisabetta Dominijanni. The penetration into the in-house company Crotone Sviluppo would have done the rest, with the identification of “welcome” general managers such as Teresa Sperlì, Giovanna Manna, Leo Pedace, Gianfranco Turino, who were also under investigation.
Alleged conditioning of the vote also in the 2017 provincial elections to elect Nicodemo Parrilla as president. There are also shadows over the Province’s assignments to companies close to Sculco and insured, according to the accusation, by Francesco Mario Benincasa, manager of the Road sector, in favor of Salvatore Rachieli’s Coiv company which supported Flora Sculco in the regional elections. Sculco also allegedly solicited the nomination of Arturo Crugliano Pantisano for a managerial position in the Province, again in exchange for his daughter’s votes, and therefore the former acting president Giuseppe Dell’Aquila is also accused. In judgment they too. The penetration was also at Aterp where the former governor Oliverio, his secretary and the usual Sculco would have influenced the appointment of Ambrogio Mascherpa as general manager.
Hands also on the ASP, where an important role would have been played by Pietro Vrenna who, after his managerial role as staff selector, would have asked for votes for Flora Sculco in the list in which Oliverio intended to run for the position of governor even if he later renounced it. Even the booking and collection services of the health ticket were the property of the alleged “committee” defeated by the Catanzaro DDA. There is also a hypothesis of bid rigging contested, as well as in Sculco, by the entrepreneur Dario Ritorto Bruzzese, operating in the private postal sector, by his wife, former councilor of the Municipality for Cultural Heritage, the Sculchian Valentina Galdieri, and by three ASP managers: the administrative director Francesco Masciari, the personnel selector Pietro Vrenna, the manager of the Cup (single booking centre), Gaetano Caterina, who had been promised the hiring, again in the ASP, of a daughter. Trial for them too.
One chapter of the investigation revolves around the management of the waste cycle in Calabria and the relationships between political exponents, at that time in government of the region, and the entrepreneurs Gianni and Raffaele Vrenna, respectively president and former president of Crotone football. Illicit trafficking of waste is the accusation, and, in addition to the Vrennas, the former regional councilor for the Environment Antonietta Rizzo and the former governor Oliverio but also Domenico Pallaria, Orsola Reillo and Antonio Augruso, managers at the time of the events, are responsible of the Region’s Environment Department. They too are on trial.
It doesn’t end here, because in addition to former councilor Rizzo, Massimo Paolucci, candidate for the European Parliament in May 2019, Salvatore Mazzotta, legal representative of Ecosistem srl, a company involved in the waste sector, Alfonso Dattolo are also accused of violating the electoral law. , collaborator of Ecosistem but known above all for having been regional councilor of the UDC with the Scopelliti council and current mayor of Rocca di Neto. Dattolo and Parrilla, unlike the other politicians, have chosen the shortened rite which will begin for 25 people on September 19th.
The investigation reconstructs a series of international transactions that the group of traders and hackers coordinated by the alleged German representative of the Megna clan, Francesco, Aracri, would have carried out between May 2019 and June 2020. Aracri, someone who paid Brazilian brokers in Bitcoin, Marc Ulrich Goke, an expert in banking transactions and computer fraud, had “hooked” the golden goose that laid the eggs. There is a whole world that opens up to the German federal police during the search of Goke. Particularly relevant is the discovery of a handbook on the functioning of clandestine financial platforms, which contains a diagram on investment methods and profit percentages. However, the position of Goke and other residents abroad was dismissed.
Finally, on September 26th the trial for the murder of Salvatore Sarcone, a multiple criminal for the mafia who was murdered in September 2014, will begin: the instigator is believed to be the boss Megna, the perpetrators are unknown. Sarcone, whose body was found in a mummified state two weeks after his disappearance, was killed with two gunshots to the head and mutilated of his hands: he had defined the boss who headed a gang capable of hacking the banking system as a “pecoraro” with the complicity of Deutsche Bank officials. Between archaism and modernity, the double face of the ‘Ndrangheta.
