Verdetto almost completely overturned compared to the first degree to the appeal process on corruption at the Sicilian Autostrade Consortium which originally involved nine defendants between entrepreneurs, officials of the Body and Professionals. At the center of the affair the payment of alleged “occult” bribes and various irregularities in the tender for the assignment of the works of three lots of the Syracuse-Gela motorway, between 2014 and 2015.
The appeal judges reduced the three -year sentence for the former vice president and commissioner of the Cas Nino Gazzara, considering only a case of corruption, and then acquitted the entrepreneur Duccio Astaldi from all charges for not having committed the fact. Maurizio Trainiti, Gaspare Dceusa, Antonio D’Andrea was also acquitted of all accusations. The former commissioner Gazzara also recorded partial acquittals from some charges. In essence, the defensive thesis was accepted on the non -existence of the crimes for the entrepreneur Astaldi and the officials of the CAS, and also on the figure of Gazzara, not as an official public but at the limit as a person in charge of public service for the perception of the sums in the form of professional consultancy to “mask them”.
The defendants’ college of defendants was composed of lawyers Giovanni Calamoneri, Luca Marafioti, Paolo Tommasini, Marco Franco, Carmelo Galati and Francesca Bilardo.