It was known around Italy that at the Civil Motorization Office in Ferrara it was possible to buy inspections for trucks and trailers for just a few hundred euros.
Secondo la Polizia Stradale e la Guardia di Finanza, che hanno eseguito sette ordinanze di custodia cautelare, era un sistema attivo e collaudato da anni: veicoli che in condizioni normali non avrebbero mai superato le verifiche ottenevano invece un esito positivo dietro pagamento di ‘mazzette’, fino a 350 euro per pratica. In carcere, all’esito dell’operazione ‘Ghost Inspections’ sono finiti i funzionari Cesare Franchi e Edoardo Caselli e con loro il titolare di un’agenzia di pratiche auto della citta’, Alessandro Barca, che avrebbe fatto da intermediario.
Four entrepreneurs, however, are under house arrest: two from the province of Ferrara, one from the province of Bologna and one from the province of Rovigo, active in the freight transport sector. There are 216 people under investigation for corruption, ideological falsehood and abuse of office, in various capacities and with different degrees of responsibility. In addition to the arrests, the investigators, coordinated by the prosecutor Andrea Maggioni, have seized the registration documents of approximately 350 vehicles in over thirty provinces (Ascoli Piceno, Benevento, Bologna, Brescia, Caserta, Cremona, Cosenza, Catania, Forli'-Cesena, Foggia, Florence, Isernia, Crotone, Messina, Milan, Mantua, Modena, Massa Carrara, Naples, Novara, Piacenza, Padua, Pisa, Parma, Pavia, Potenza, Ravenna, Reggio Calabria, Reggio Emilia, Rome, Rimini, Rovigo, Salerno, Siena and Verona), plus those of another 270 deemed irregular and currently in circulation. These will have to be checked and all will be subjected to extraordinary inspections. Several of these vehicles, for those who carried out the investigations, are not safe, with consequent risk to public safety. It emerged in fact that the ok was given even in the presence of mechanical or electrical inefficiencies. The investigations made use of roadside checks, but also of telephone and environmental interceptions and of the viewing of images from cameras installed in the headquarters of the Civil Motorization, which filmed and filed the exchanges of 'bribes' between the suspects, hidden among the documents.
Listening to the conversations allowed us to reconstruct how the compliant officials were identified as “the sun” and “divine hand”, and for this reason they tried to divert any revision towards them, trying instead to avoid other technicians, recognized as “fussy”. Or even “dangerous”, for the success of the illicit business, as in the case of a correct tester. The investigating judge Vartan Giacomelli, speaking of a “tested system, certainly in place for a long time, probably for years”, accepted the requests of the Prosecutor for several charges, but also rejected them for ten additional defendants, not identifying precautionary needs, and for another seven, due to the lack of evidence of guilt. Against this partial rejection of the accusatory framework, the prosecutors will file an appeal to the Review Court.
Article published on 12 October 2020 - 18:41
