Caivano: The Court of Auditors presents the bill to former administrators: approximately €100 in financial damages.

Caivano - The financial crisis and its responsibilities. The Court of Auditors presented a bill of approximately €100 to the former administrators of the Municipality of Caivano in relation to the financial crisis declared by the institution in 2016.

The jurisdictional section of the Campania Court of Auditors ordered former mayor Antonio Falco to pay €69.205 to the municipality he administered. Former councilors Francesco Casaburo, Bartolomeo Perna, Enzo Pinto, Vincenzo Semonella, and Giulio Di Napoli were charged a total of €31.142.

The ruling concerns the application of Article 248, paragraph 5, of the Consolidated Law on Local Authorities, which establishes financial liability for administrators who, through fraudulent or grossly negligent conduct, omissions, or commissions, have contributed to the institution's financial insolvency.

«Untruthful and unprudent accounting records»

The judges' reasoning focuses primarily on the financial management of the Municipality.
The Court of Auditors, in fact, identifies a "serious degree of negligence" in the directors' conduct, which can be traced, as stated in the ruling, to the "casual and continuous adoption of accounting planning measures that were neither truthful nor prudent."

A particularly harsh judgment, which links the bankruptcy not only to the institution's financial situation, but also to the choices made by administrators over the years in planning and managing income and expenditure.
According to the reconstruction contained in the documents, these management methods contributed to worsening an already compromised economic situation, leading the Municipality to declare bankruptcy in 2016.

The Green Park knot

Among the cases under scrutiny by the Court of Auditors' Prosecutor's Office is that of Parco Verde, one of Caivano's most problematic real estate complexes, which has been in serious disrepair for years.
The management of the properties and, above all, the failure to collect the sums owed by the occupants represented one of the most significant chapters of the accounting investigation.

The Prosecutor's Office had highlighted what the documents described as a "deafening and complicit inertia of the administrative-bureaucratic apparatus" in taking concrete steps to recover the rent and occupancy fees relating to the building complex.

Uncollected revenue and red accounts

The problem, therefore, was not only the presence of debts and imbalances in municipal budgets, but also the administration's inability to recover resources it should have collected.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, the collection of fees and occupancy fees for the Parco Verde thus becomes a prime example of administrative management incapable of transforming the sums owed to the Municipality into actual revenue.

A situation which, together with the disputes over the accounting planning, would have contributed, according to the prosecution, to the creation of the conditions that led to the financial collapse.

The decision of the Court of Auditors

The Court of Auditors therefore deemed the sanction provided for by the Consolidated Law on Local Authorities applicable, recognizing the liability of the administrators called to court for having contributed, through conduct deemed grossly negligent, to the situation that led to the bankruptcy.

The ruling thus refocuses the spotlight on the financial management of the Municipality of Caivano in the years prior to 2016 and on one of the most controversial chapters in the institution's administrative history.