Naples, according to the Court of Auditors, Councillor Cosenza caused damages of 1,3 million euros.

Naples – A compensation request of one million three hundred thousand euros. This is the very serious document notified by the Public Prosecutor's Office. Court of Auditors for Campania to the current Councilor for Infrastructure of the Municipality of Naples, Engineer Edoardo Cosenza.

The dispute, which threatens to engulf not only the technician but the entire Manfredi administration, concerns a series of professional roles held by Cosenza in past years, when he was a full-time professor of Construction Techniques at Federico II University.

The law—specifically, Article 6, paragraph 9, of Law 240 of 2010—is clear: it expressly prohibits full-time university professors from practicing as freelancers. This incompatibility provision, according to the documents filed by the Public Accounting Prosecutor's Office, is what Cosenza allegedly violated, resulting in the alleged financial damage.

Raising the alarm and loudly calling for the councilor's resignation is Gennaro Capodanno, president of the Valori Collinari Committee and former president of the Vomero district. "Mayor Manfredi should revoke Cosenza's appointment," Capodanno appealed, linking his request to a legal case that sounds like déjà vu for Palazzo San Giacomo.

The precedent, in fact, concerns the current mayor.

That case concluded just a few months ago, in December 2023, with a plea bargain (no. 666/2023) in which the former Rector agreed to repay €210 to the university. This sum is well below the €763.063 damages that had been quantified by the Prosecutor's Office.

But the Cosenza case presents, according to Capodanno, a further and more worrying critical element. As reported by some media outlets, the Court of Auditors' investigations are revealing some subsequent "critical conduct."

Specifically, it refers to the transfer to the children of the bare ownership of three properties and the full ownership of one-third of another property. These transactions, it should be noted, were carried out at a price well below market value and, crucially, at a time when the Court of Auditors' investigation, which subsequently led to the billion-dollar compensation claim, was already underway.

This asset movement could appear to the accounting judges as an attempt to secure the assets from potential state recovery action. New Year's Eve's request to the mayor thus becomes political: the revocation would be justified not only by the serious dispute itself, but also by these subsequent behaviors, which would cast a shadow over the councilor's transparency.

The ball is now in Mayor Manfredi's court, who is faced with a delicate decision that could shake up his administration, in a climate reminiscent of his own past legal woes.