Liguria. While in Ameglia the president of the Liguria Region Giovanni Toti was able to hold the first of three political meetings under house arrest, discussing with his councilors (the interim president Alessandro Piana and the councilors Marco Scajola and Giacomo Giampedrone), today at the Palace of Justice it was a interlocutory day, also because in Genoa it is a day of celebration. No interrogation (the new calendar will be drawn up tomorrow) and prosecutors have the opinion on the request for mitigation of the precautionary measure for Aldo Spinelli has also been postponed until tomorrow.
By Wednesday the investigating judge will decide on Aldo Spinelli
His lawyer Sandro Vaccaro asked for the measure to be attenuated with the conversion of house arrest to a ban on management of the company. For the lawyer, in fact, there is no longer any risk of tampering with the evidence given that the co-investigators have been interrogated and the witnesses connected to the port’s practices would have all already been interviewed. But that’s not necessarily the case. The prosecutors Luca Federico Manotti and Luca Monteverde will decide in these hours whether to give a positive or negative opinion and will send it to the investigating judge Paola Faggioni by tomorrow morning. The judge in turn will have to decide on the request within Wednesday.
The Review: a test also for the Prosecutor’s Office
But the truth watershed of the investigation will be a July with the hearings and decisions of the Review Court. The first one will probably come already on July 1st for Paolo Emilio Signorini who has been in prison since May 7. The hearing for him has been set for June 28th and the decision will come a few days later. L’July 8 A hearing has been set for both Testa twins, accused of vote-swapping with the aggravating circumstance of having facilitated the mafia. And right after that will be the governor’s hearing Giovanni Toti (9 or 10 July). If Judge Faggioni in the meantime rejects the mitigation of the measure for Aldo Spinelli, he will also apply for review so that the hearing can be scheduled by July 15th.
It will be a fundamental step for everyone the one before judges Massimo Cusatti, Marina Orsini and Luisa Avanzino, both for the suspects who hope to see the most afflictive measures revoked and attenuated, and for the same Genoese prosecutors who will meet with a panel that will examine the investigation papers for the first time (even if only from the point of view of precautionary needs and not of serious indications of guilt). A very different situation from a investigating judge who granted the measures requested by the prosecution after having read and studied the investigation documents for six months. A real one test in short also for the accusation.
The reference to the Supreme Court ruling
The Review Court which on 15 June revoked the house arrest for Filippo Cozzani (Matteo’s brother) in the context of the ongoing investigationapo to the prosecutor’s office of La Spezia from which the Genoese one started, has not yet read the ‘Genoa papers’.
But in one passage the Review recalled a sbody of the Supreme Court which is of great importance for the Genoese prosecutors. As the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court has long established, the promised act can also be included in the crime of corruption indirectly in the function exercised by the qualified subject, it being sufficient that his powers are in some way connected at the act itself. According to a recent ruling, the act could even belong to a different sector of the public administration as long as the qualified person can exercise a mere factual interference”. It’s about the sentence of the Supreme Court. 13406/2019 second “The crime of corruption for the exercise of the function includes the conduct of the public official who seeks money or other benefits in exchange for the generic interest in the definition of the procedure following the failure to pay a tax by the private corruptor (In motivation, the Court he clarified that it is of no consequence that the public official acts in a sector of the public administration other than that to which he belongs, as long as he can exert interference on it at least in a purely de facto manner“.
If indeed Toti he defended himself in the interrogation before the prosecutors by saying among other things that he he had no power over the decisions of the port committeethe prosecutors maintain precisely as the sentence just cited explains that it is sufficient, to integrate the crime of corruption, precisely the fact that he could “interfere” through Signorini also in a sector of public administration other than the Region.
Toti’s lawyer: “Possible appeal to the Supreme Court after the summer”
The lawyer Savi, present at the Ameglia press conference, repeating the reasons with which he asks the Review to release governor Toti from prison since the precautionary needs have no longer existed, also explained how if the Review also rejects the request he will appeal to the Supreme Court, but between filing of documents and weekday suspension, the decision may arrive no earlier than September-October.
Savi then reiterated the need for “the problem of party financing is addressed at a general level” because ” it is difficult to create a secure relationship between those who receive funding in an absolutely lawful manner and an administrative action that is aimed at promoting or in any case paving the way for productive settlements rather than initiatives of public interest where the same beneficiaries of these activities then want to finance a political party”.
And he then explained that Toti, although convinced that he had acted in compliance with the law, could review “the way in which you requested funding”. He didn’t say it but the reference that emerged was Toti’s insistent phone calls to Spinelli to ask him for “a hand”. Methods that could be managed differently in the future, directly by the party secretariats for example and not directly by the president of the Region
The crux of immediate judgment
One of the hypotheses still in the field and on which the prosecutors are making evaluations is that according to which if the Review and Cassation were to still keep Toti under house arrest they would – almost obligatorily – think about bringing only the line of investigation relating to corruption on the part of entrepreneurs (what led to the measures) a immediate judgment. This is because the law requires it in the case of suspects in pre-trial detention. But the law is not peremptory because immediate judgment must be ordered in the case of suspects in prison or under house arrest “unless it seriously prejudices the investigations”. In other words, the Prosecutor’s Office should demonstrate and justify that the 180 imposed to request immediate action are insufficient to complete the investigations. And then it could move forward without breaking the investigation in two
