Sensational Turning Point in Zagaria's Pen Drive Case: Policeman Vesevo's Sentence Reduced on Appeal

A mystery that has kept the public in suspense for years has found an unexpected conclusion. Police officer Oscar Vesevo, accused of stealing the flash drive containing the Casalesi boss's secrets, Michele Zagaria, during his capture, received a substantial reduction in sentence in the appeal trial.

He was sentenced to three years and three months in prison on charges of stealing a pen drive that, according to the Naples DDA, contained the boss's secrets during the capture of the Casalesi clan leader Michele Zagaria, which took place in Casapesenna on December 7, 2011. He was also accused of having resold it for 50 euros to a businessman close to the clan.

This latter hypothesis was never confirmed during the investigations nor did it emerge during the first-degree trial, held at the Naples North Court in Aversa, at the end of which - it was June 2023 - Vesevo, still employed by the Isernia Police Headquarters, was sentenced to a total of six years and four months, having been found guilty of embezzlement (four years and six months) and two counts of fraud (one year and eight months) in relation to the sale of a house at auction.

The court, however, ruled out the aggravating circumstance of mafia involvement, thus undermining the core of the prosecution, which claimed the flash drive was stolen and resold to the clan. Vesevo's accuser was Maria Rosaria Massa, owner, along with her husband Vincenzo Inquieto, of the house where Zagaria (both spouses were convicted of aiding and abetting) was tracked down. Massa had testified during the trial that the defendant had taken the flash drive, specifying, however, that the device belonged to her daughter and contained her music and personal documents, not the clan leader's secrets.

Furthermore, in a different trial, the entrepreneur Orlando Fontana, to whom Vesevo, according to the DDA, had sold the support stolen during Zagaria's capture, had already been acquitted for this episode.

The Naples Court of Appeals has significantly reduced the charges against Vesevo, defended by Giovanni Cantelli; the judges have reclassified the crime from embezzlement to aggravated theft, while declaring the statute of limitations for the fraud charge.

And the main crime itself, theft, is set to become time-barred in a few months, a circumstance that should emerge in the Court of Cassation in the likely event that an appeal is filed.

Vesevo has always denied all charges; during the first-degree trial, in February of last year, he had argued in court that he had not "taken any pen drive from Michele Zagaria's hideout." "During the arrest operations," he said, "I spent the entire time in the corridor digging to find the bunker.

And without me the Casalesi leader would not have been captured"; and his lawyer Giovanni Cantelli underlined how "in this trial we have witnessed a reversal of reality, with the servants of the State who have assumed the role of the accused".