“You are a public prosecutor, do you realize what you are saying?” Judge Roberto Spanò’s tone was incredulous when addressing the European prosecutor Sergio Spadaroaccused in Brescia with his colleague from Milan Fabio De Pasquale for not having filed evidence favorable to the defense of the Eni-Nigeria trial, which ended with the acquittal of all the accused. The offending sentence weighs, potentially, like a boulder: «I knew there had been a agreement with the prosecutor of Brescia that this circumstance emerged in the 507″, Spadaro explained, that is, with the admission of new evidence. The circumstance to be “brought to light” was the alleged approach by Eni’s lawyers Paola Severino and Nerio Diodà of the president of the panel Marco Tremolada, who – according to the story of Eni’s former external lawyer Piero Amara – had assured the lawyers of the defendants’ acquittal. Amara had told this circumstance – a de relato de relato – to the magistrates Paolo Storari and Laura Pedio, who were hearing him in the investigation into the “false Eni conspiracy”. And Spadaro and De Pasquale had tried to bring those statements into the trial on the alleged maxi bribe, asking to hear Amara as a witness, including among the points for which to hear him also the alleged interference with the judges. Tremolada, unaware of everything, rejected the prosecutors’ request. But in the meantime Amara’s statements had been sent to Brescia for jurisdiction, where the investigation file against unknown persons was closed within a short time.
Spadaro, however, dropped a bombshell in the courtroom on Thursday: according to his words, the prosecutor of Brescia, Francis Priestagreed with the idea of bringing out in the courtroom what Amara had said. In short, an agreement to reveal an ongoing investigation, Spanò pointed out, wanting to simplify the matter as much as possible. Prete, having listened to Spadaro’s words, decided to temporarily leave the courtroom: “Since they’re talking about me, I’m leaving – he said -. I will then evaluate my decisions». A phrase indicative of the desire to protect one’s honor in the appropriate places. The climate in the courtroom therefore became tense: Spadaro justified his statement by referring to a message sent to him by De Pasquale on 4 February 2021, which Spanò read in the courtroom: «Everything ok in Brescia. The circumstance must also emerge in the hearing for the other Francis.” There would therefore have been not only the assent of Francesco Greco, Milan’s prosecutor at the time, but also that of Prete, according to that message, to whom his Milanese counterpart had sent Amara’s statements. «But would the prosecutor of Brescia who receives a file against unknown persons – Spanò underlined incredulously – have an interest in interfering in a proceeding in Milan by indicating to the prosecutors at the hearing what they should do? So he has an investigation that is secret and he goes to tell the public prosecutor “no look, it’s fine, it’s secret but at this point you disclose it”? But does he realize the gravity of what he is saying?
After Spadaro it was exactly Francesco Greco to speak: «Probably during the meeting with Doctor Prete we talked about this 507. I don’t think that any of us expressed judgments or things of this kind or at least I don’t remember it. Probably, when we left here we spoke or De Pasquale called me to ask me how it went and I replied “she went well, we explained everything to Prete”. Frankly, I don’t think I could have said anything like that. I cannot respond to WhatsApp messages made by others.” Greco clarified that Amara’s testimony, with the reference to Tremolada, had been requested so as not to be “accused by the defense of having hidden it”. A concept that did not convince the prosecutor Donato Greco: «Hide what? By transmitting to Brescia you had done your job” and that was enough. The danger, however, Greco argued, was that, once in the courtroom, Amara could talk about the circumstance even without someone asking him the question. «What could have been the reactions of the defenses? You are trying to boycott the Court,” he said, giving some examples. This feeling, however, was aroused anyway, precisely because of the attempt to insert that testimony in a way considered anomalous by the Brescia prosecutor’s office. Who pointed out to Greco a “contradiction”: having brought the report to Brescia, hoping that it could be “done absolutely quickly, carrying out investigations in a few days” while a few moments later “the conditions were created so that the statements of Amara at the basis of that proceeding would become public, in the most explosive way possible.” For Greco, however, “it is one thing to ask for the 507 and one thing to go to the 507 hearing”. In short, the timing would not have been so quick. But certainly, the news – regardless of the investigation into Tremolada which, Greco underlined, “fortunately never happened” – would have exploded in a perhaps irreversible way, probably canceling the entire process. Which, according to Spadaro’s statements, could not have been based solely on the statements of Vincenzo Armanna, the great accuser considered a boaster by the Court.
Storari’s interpretation is, in fact, devastating: “De Pasquale, Spadaro and Greco want to get rid of a president of the college”, he declared a few weeks ago in front of the disciplinary section of the CSM, where he is on “trial” for the scandal of Amara’s statements. Tremolada found out everything only from the newspapers. And he didn’t take it very well, contrary to what De Pasquale told the judges in Brescia during the trial. “I’ll leave you to imagine – said the magistrate heard as a witness by the CSM -, I never did any of this. And I got angrier with the prosecutors in Milan than with Amara. They had documentary proof, in the trial, that those statements could not be true, even from a temporal point of view: Amara had said that I would have promised an acquittal by March 2020, because Descalzi was due to be reconfirmed as Eni administrator in April”. But even before the request to hear Amara as a witness, the president had drawn up a hearing schedule that extended until 2021.
