Sexual encounters, 16 of which were documented, with a lawyer to commit acts contrary to his office. This is what emerged from the Guardia di Finanza's investigations, which led to the arrest of the president of the Second Section of the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Catanzaro. According to Giovanna Pacifico, preliminary investigations judge of the Court of Salerno, the magistrate allegedly engaged in "habitual sexual relations with a lawyer, failing to abstain, having been required to do so (...) from composing the panel hearing the tax appeals—assigned to his panel—in which the private party appellant was represented by the lawyer in adopting rulings upholding appeals filed by the lawyer." The sexual encounters, all between February 13 and June 21, 2019, allegedly took place in the offices of the Provincial Tax Commission of Catanzaro.
The trial against the Soriano clan of Filandari, in the province of Vibo Valentia, has also concluded amid charges leveled against Marco Petrini, magistrate of the Catanzaro Court of Appeal, and Marzia Tassone, a lawyer from Davoli (Catanzaro), representing the Catanzaro Bar Association. According to the Salerno Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA), the judge and lawyer were implicated in an act of complicity in corruption in judicial documents. Judge Marco Petrini, president of the Court of Appeal in the "Ragno" trial against the Soriano clan, allegedly refused to rule on the Catanzaro Prosecutor's Office's request to hear the statements of new informant Emanuele Mancuso (a scion of the Limbadi clan of the same name) against the Soriano clan, despite Marzia Tassone (the lawyer for some of the defendants) being his "steady lover." At the appeal hearing on January 14 of last year, the judge did not admit the informant's statement and on several occasions he allegedly had sexual relations with the lawyer Tassone, according to the Guardia di Finanza and the Salerno Anti-Mafia Directorate.
Money, sex, and other “benefits” to tame sentences. A disturbing picture has been revealed by the investigation by the Salerno Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA), which led to the arrest of Marco Petrini, president of the Catanzaro Court of Appeal and of the Provincial Tax Commission, on charges of corruption in judicial documents. In addition to the magistrate, seven other people have been held under the precautionary custody order, six in prison and one under house arrest. The order was issued by the investigating judge of the Salerno court at the request of the Salerno DDA, led by Acting Prosecutor Luca Masini, and carried out by personnel from the Financial Police Unit of the Guardia di Finanza, the SCICO, and other units of the Guardia di Finanza. Confidentiality remains regarding the other people involved in the investigation, which began in 2018. Two Calabrian lawyers are involved, one from the Catanzaro bar, who ended up in prison, and the other from Locri, under house arrest. A key figure in the affair, in addition to Petrini, was an unsuspected retired doctor, former manager of the Provincial Health Authority of Cosenza, who, according to what has emerged, "paid" the magistrate on a monthly basis to guarantee his subservience and, at the same time, provided him with new opportunities for corruption by offering favourable decisions to defendants in the first instance or their relatives and to private individuals who had lost in civil cases in exchange for money, goods and other services. In one case, the Catanzaro magistrate, at the mercy of a very precarious financial situation and forced to continually procure money, allegedly acted to allow the reassignment of the life pension to a former regional councilor who had been deprived of it following a sentence of six years of imprisonment with perpetual interdiction. In other circumstances, Petrini would have helped candidates pass the exam to qualify as lawyers. At the same time, an investigation coordinated by the Catanzaro DDA and carried out by the Crotone Guardia di Finanza dealt another blow to one of the main 'Ndrangheta clans in the Crotone area, opening up new possibilities for the intertwining of crime, freemasonry, economics, and politics. Three people have been arrested for alleged interference by the Grande Aracri clan in the activities of the Municipality of Cutro. Those arrested are Ottavio Rizzuto, current chairman of the board of directors of Banca di Credito Cooperativo del Crotonese and former director of the Technical Department of the Municipality of Cutro from 2007 to 2015; Alfonso Sestito, a cardiologist at the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, who was immediately suspended from the Gemelli Polyclinic Foundation; and entrepreneur Rosario Le Rose. Also caught in the clutches of the Catanzaro DDA is Nicolino Grande Aracri, head of the Cutro local and crime boss of the province of Crotone, currently detained under the 41 bis regime in the Opera prison in Milan, who has been served with a notice of investigation. The Grande Aracri gang is said to have gained control of the municipality of Cutro, "effectively managing numerous contracts and deriving direct and significant economic benefits from them." As part of the "Thomas" investigation, a preliminary investigation has been issued against former vice president of the Calabria Region Nicola Adamo and former regional councilor Pino Tursi Prato, "already convicted in 2004 for various crimes, including mafia association, and for the crime of illicit influence peddling."
EDITORIAL TEAM
Choose the social channel you want to subscribe to