Giovanni Toti’s strategy is developed on a judicial front, with the first appeals, and on a political one, with the consultation of the centre-right leaders, after the investigating judge denied him the revocation of the House arrest where it has been since May 7th. One is no less important than the other for the Governor accused of corruption, forgery and vote swapping in the investigation that rocked the Liguria throwing national politics into turmoil a month before the European elections were held.
The appeal to the Review
On a legal level, the next step in the defense of the president of Liguria will be an appeal to the Genoa Review Court against the investigating judge’s decision Paola Faggioni to leave him under house arrest in the family villa in Ameglia (La Spezia). His defender, the lawyer Stefano Savi, will only contest the existence of the precautionary requirements which according to the judge are still current. In the first place, the danger that Toti could commit other crimes of the same type or who puts pressure to pollute the evidence if, as the judge wrote, once free he were to return to being the Governor.
The position of the defense
The defense, in fact, believes that, while we are in the midst of an affair that has had and has enormous resonance, it is absolutely impossible to even imagine that Toti could approach some entrepreneur for a new hypothetical corruption attempt. Toti was interrogated for hours by the prosecutors of the Genoa Prosecutor’s Office, confirming their reconstruction of the facts, Savi underlines. Except, however, in the crucial passage: the 74 thousand euros that the entrepreneur Aldo Spinelli (he is under house arrest, the judge yesterday denied him a meeting with his son Roberto, who is also under investigation) has paid his electoral committees are not, as the prosecution says, a bribe in exchange for the favors he has granted him from the seat of the Region, but voluntary funding for its development policy for the port of Genoa. The prosecutor’s office and investigating judge, however, believe that the interrogation did not improve the position of the Governor, who would demonstrate a strong aptitude for making his function available in exchange for money.
The political side
On the political side, Toti does not seem to have any intention of presenting those resignation which could convince the investigating judge to revoke the house arrest. He wants the burden of responsibility for the decision to fall on the entire majority. For this reason he is preparing to ask for authorization to meet both national and local leaders of the center right in person or via the internet.
