Dissolution of Stefanaconi municipality due to mafia, former mayor Solano appeals to the TAR

John

By John

The former mayor of StefanaconiSavior Solanotogether with some former councilors and city councilors has appealed to the TAR of Lazio against the presidential decree which led to the dissolution of his administration on 26 July due to mafia infiltration. The appeal is aimed at obtaining the annulment of the decisions of the Head of State, the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of the Interior and the Prefecture of Vibo Valentia, all of whom agree in underlining the «serious damage to the interests of the community, the serious pollution and the deterioration of Stefanaconi’s municipal administration, with bad management and a clear absence of legality as well as the presence of concrete, unambiguous and relevant elements regarding the administrators’ connections with mafia-type crime”. Regarding the former mayor Salvatore Solano, the dissolution report highlighted that – in addition to having been convicted of electoral corruption in competition with his cousin Giuseppe D’Amico (sentenced to 30 years for mafia association, while his brother Antonio was sentenced to 18 years) -, his figure “appears unquestionably to have colluded with prominent elements of organized crime” since from the “documents it appears that Solano played a leading role in favoring the exponents of organized crime and their interests”, with a “functional subordination with respect to the D’Amicos and a relationship of contiguity of the mayor continued also with the functions carried out as president of the Province of Vibo Valentia”, a position which was abandoned in January 2023 (with the election of a new president) and hence the failure to send a Commission for access to documents also to the Province (sending previously requested in vain, since 2022, by the president of the Anti-Mafia Nicola Morra to the former prefect Roberta Lulli) as the main cause of possible “pollution” represented by Solano himself has already been removed and instead received the inspection of the Municipality of Stefanaconi ordered by the new prefect of Vibo, Paolo Giovanni Grieco, in September 2023.