Today is Giovanni Toti’s day. The president of the Liguria Region, under house arrest since May 7, is ready to defend himself before the magistrates of Genoa. After the silence in the guarantee interrogation with the investigating judge Paola Faggioni – a choice dictated, according to the defense, by the need to read the over 9 thousand pages of the investigation – today she will answer the questions of the prosecutors Luca Monteverde and Federico Manotti, in charge of the investigation in which he is accused of electoral corruption, forgery and vote swapping. A confrontation that does not promise to be easy at all and certainly not short and which will begin at 11. Mystery over the place of the interrogation to try to keep the gaze of journalists and onlookers away. Accompanied by defender Stefano Savi, Toti is ready to clarify every aspect of a story that has marked a real earthquake in Ligurian politics.
He will have to explain to the magistrates the relationships with the entrepreneur Aldo Spinelli, the alleged pressure received on the port of Genoa, the hypothetical pressure for the thirty-year concession of the bulk terminal and the suspicious transfers to the Committee that bears his name, some diverted to his personal account , according to the thesis of the prosecutor’s office which disputes 55 thousand euros passed, in three transfers carried out between 10 June and 20 October 2022 (between the administrative and political ones of that year), from the coffers of the Toti list committee to his personal current account . Money used – the defense has always maintained – only for political expenses. The Ligurian governor will also have to answer for electoral corruption for the accusation of vote-swapping in the 2020 regional elections and his relationship with the Testa twins, the ‘Riesini’ who in the Certosa district allegedly controlled around 400 preferences.
There are four electoral competitions (administrative in Savona and Genoa, national in September 2022 and elections in Ventimiglia and Sarzana) in which Toti «pressed by the need to raise funds to face the electoral campaign, made his function, his powers available and their role, in favor of private interests, in exchange for funding, reiterating the mechanism with various entrepreneurs” and thus “abdicating” their “important institutional duties”, write the magistrates. Only after the interrogation, the defense will present a request for the revocation of house arrest, a necessary condition for the confrontation with his majority which could lead Toti to choose to resign as governor of the Liguria Region.
