The day after the earthquake that shocked Ligurian politics with the arrest (under house arrest) of the President of the Region Giovanni Toti for corruption, the investigation by the judiciary does not stop and it is already time, at the Palace of Justice, to establish the guarantee interrogations for the protagonists of the investigation. The calendar will be drawn up during these hours. The first person to appear (not before tomorrow) before the investigating judge Paola Faggioni will be the former president of the Port Authority and current president of the energy giant Iren, Paolo Emilio Signorini, the only prisoner (in Marassi) of an investigation that matters 25 under investigation and which led to ten precautionary measures.
According to what was reconstructed by the investigators – Giovanni Toti was intercepted as early as 2021 and the request for arrest dates back to last December – there is a system of power made up of favors and bribes between the public administration (Region and Port Authority) and companies. A scheme in which the governor, Signorini, the logistics entrepreneur Aldo Spinelli – described as the ‘tsar’ of the port in the city – and Matteo Cozzani, head of the governor’s cabinet, would have a leading role.
Toti, leader of ‘Noi Moderati’, suspended from the role of president of the Liguria Region, says he is “very calm” but the accusations are serious. Cozzani is accused of the crime of electoral corruption aggravated by the aim of facilitating the activity of a mafia clan. During the electoral campaign for the 2020 regional elections, figures close to the Sicilian community of Riesina (the Testa twins) would have brought votes (at least 400) in exchange for the promise of jobs and public housing: a mechanism of which, according to the prosecutors of the prosecutor’s office led by Nicola Piacente, Toti would have been aware.
Among the accusations, there is also that the governor accepted 74 thousand euros from Spinelli to “find a solution” to privatize the Punta Dell’Olmo beach and facilitated the concession of port spaces. Toti – who will spend his house arrest in the house in Ameglia – and Cozzani are also accused of having accepted the promise of Francesco Moncada, director of Esselunga (an unrelated company, ed.), of illicit financing through the hidden payment of advertising for the vote of 2022 in light of the commitment to unblock the procedures to open two supermarkets.
