One month before the European elections, a judicial earthquake shakes Liguria. And the wave starts from afar. It is 2020 and from the documents transmitted by the Prosecutor’s Office of La Spezia to colleagues in Genoa, the investigation into an alleged corruption system begins which ranges from financing for electoral campaigns, to port concessions, to the collection of votes with the suspicion of mafia support of Cosa Nostra. A hypothesized exchange of favors, bribes and gifts that causes Ligurian political and business leaders to falter. The president of the Region Giovanni Toti is under house arrest on charges of corruption, in prison in Marassi since yesterday afternoon is the former president of the Port Authority and current CEO of the Iren energy group (with temporary revocation of the delegations ) Paolo Emilio Signorini. And the linchpin of the investigation is Aldo Spinelli, founder of a very powerful hub in the logistics and real estate sector, also under house arrest.
Toti arrested, from the suites in Monte Carlo to the Chanel bag and the Apple Watch: the luxury goods received by Paolo Emilio Signorini
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Almost four years later, the Genoese prosecutors, coordinated by the chief prosecutor Nicola Piacente, are pulling the strings. The moment is hot, the European elections on 8 and 9 June are around the corner and there is a debate on the separation of magistrates’ careers. Piacente points out: no clockwork investigation, given that “our request to the investigating judge was made five months ago, precisely on December 27th”. There are ten suspects against whom precautionary measures have been issued and the prominent name is that of Toti. From his conduct, writes the investigating judge Paola Faggiani, “an evident systematic nature of the corruption mechanism shines through”, from the entrepreneurs Aldo and Roberto Spinelli he would have collected “the promises of various loans and received a total of 74,100 euros”. On several occasions and in conjunction with four political competitions that took place over 18 months: «Forty thousand euros would have been disbursed on 8 and 9 December 2021, 15 thousand on 25 May 2022 and another 15 thousand on 8 September 2022″, all to the Giovanni Toti Committee, while 4,100 euros would have been paid on 10 March 2023 “as participation in the electoral dinner”. The governor, explains the investigating judge, «pressed by the need to raise funds to face the electoral campaign, made his function, his powers and his role available in favor of private interests, in exchange for funding, reiterating the mechanism with several entrepreneurs.” In some cases «it was Toti himself who explicitly asked for the financing, promising the private sector behaviors or measures favorable to him or even reminding them “that he had done his part” and therefore to consequently expect a “hand” in view of the elections». And so he would work, among other things, to transform the Punta dell’Olmo beach from free to private. The precautionary needs for the governor, according to the investigating judge, derive from the “current and concrete danger that the suspect will commit other serious crimes of the same kind and, in particular, that he may repeat similar corrupt conduct during the next elections”. The financiers notified the order to the president at three in the morning, in the room of a hotel in Sanremo where he was in view of the press conference scheduled with his friend Flavio Briatore for the inauguration of the Twiga in Ventimiglia. The governor’s home in Genoa was searched. “We’re very calm,” he commented as he returned home escorted by plainclothes soldiers. “My client is calm and intends to explain everything,” reiterated his lawyer Stefano Savi. «Toti will continue to work. There is no talk of resignation, the process is still to be done. These are facts to which we can give an explanation within the scope of a legitimate administrative activity for the public interest.”
Also under house arrest is Cozzani who, with the twins Italo and Arturo Testa, now suspended FI executives, is accused of the crime of electoral corruption in the 2020 regional elections. «They are accused of having promised jobs and the change of an electoral building accommodation for convey votes from the Genoese community of Riesi (Caltanissetta) and in any case Sicilians” towards Toti’s list, is the thesis of the Prosecutor’s Office. The aggravating circumstance of facilitation of the Cosa Nostra mafia association was also contested.
Toti and Cozzani, according to the investigating judge, were looking for votes and money for politics. And they would have «accepted the promise of Francesco Moncada, Esselunga board member, of an illicit loan represented by the hidden payment of some passages on the panel displayed on the Colombo Terrace for the 2022 municipal elections». In exchange, they would have undertaken to “unblock” the pending procedures in the Region for the opening of two stores. «Confidence in the work of the judiciary, hoping that clarity will be provided promptly», is Esselunga’s comment, certain that its management «has always acted correctly». In the detailed corruption map drawn by the prosecutors, ample space is given to the tandem between Signorini and Spinelli, a rich self-made businessman. And quite generous, with Chanel bags, Cartier bracelets and hotel stays in Monte Carlo with an unlimited credit card given to Signorini to speed up the scheduling of the concession procedure for the Bulk Terminal to the company 55% controlled by Spinelli srl, then renewed for thirty years. And to obtain further spaces in the port in the remaining three years of Signorini’s mandate as head of the Authority.
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