«After eight years of trial, Eugenio Facciolla had the right to have a sentence as quickly as possible, which could be definitive and put an end to this matter». The lawyer Antonio Zecca, defender of the former public prosecutor of Castrovillari, entrusts to these words the meaning of a long-awaited decision: the inadmissibility of the appeal proposed by the public prosecutor against the acquittal of the magistrate on the charge of forgery.
The ruling of the Salerno judges closes the chapter of the appeal that remained open after the sentence of 18 July 2025. The Court had acquitted Facciolla of the charges of corruption and forgery. On the first front, the decision had already become final, because the prosecution had not appealed that part of the sentence. The forgery remained, which the Prosecutor’s Office had instead decided to insist on. Now that initiative too has been declared inadmissible.
Zecca does not hide his surprise at a choice which, in his opinion, separated two closely connected disputes in the original structure of the accusation. «We went to trial for a series of corruptions, variously structured, and for some hypotheses of forgery. As is normal for what happens, the key moment was clearly the hypothesis of corruption”, recalls the lawyer. Precisely those accusations, particularly serious for a magistrate, were dropped without the Salerno Prosecutor’s Office asking for a review on appeal.
«The forgery was instrumental to corruption», explains Zecca. Hence the difficulty for the defense to understand the decision to challenge only the chapter relating to forgeries after the acquittal pronounced at first instance. A choice that prolonged a story already marked by disputes that have been modified several times and by a procedural confrontation that lasted years.
The defense had raised the question of the inadmissibility of the appeal since last March, returning to the point during subsequent hearings. The confrontation with the General Prosecutor’s Office, Zecca reports, was intense. The decision came at the end of that discussion and, for the magistrate, represents a further favorable step after a proceeding that had a profound impact on his professional life.
The investigation had taken shape around Facciolla’s activity at the helm of the Castrovillari Prosecutor’s Office and the relationships with the STM company, which dealt with interception services and attributable to the traffic police officer Vito Tignanelli and his wife Marisa Aquino.
According to the accusatory hypothesis, between 2016 and 2018 the magistrate favored the company in assigning tasks for telephone and environmental interceptions, receiving in exchange some utilities, including a telephone card and a video surveillance system near his home in Cosenza. Then, the accusations of forgery surrounding investigative documents.
The Court of Salerno had acquitted Facciolla, in the first instance, of the charges of corruption and forgery. Tignanelli and Aquino were also acquitted of corruption. For the forgery, however, the proceedings had a different outcome for other defendants: the Forestry Carabinieri Marshal Carmine Greco was sentenced to one year and the police officer Alessandro Nota to eight months.
The thread relating to the forgeries was intertwined with the investigations into Greco’s alleged relationships with criminal circles, which emerged in the investigative context of the «Stige» investigation. The checks had led the Catanzaro Prosecutor’s Office to also examine alleged irregularities regarding documents of the office directed by Facciolla. The documents then arrived in Salerno, responsible for proceedings involving magistrates from the Catanzaro district.
The prosecution’s appeal, limited to the charge of forgery, had kept the criminal case open, despite the first degree acquittal. The declaration of inadmissibility now marks a new milestone, without this authorizing confusion between the different procedural positions or the outcomes reserved for the other defendants.
The Facciolla story does not end in the criminal justice classrooms. At the same time, the magistrate addressed the dispute over the lack of confirmation in the managerial role of prosecutor of Castrovillari, a decision adopted by the CSM and also based on assessments relating to conduct considered relevant from a professional and disciplinary point of view.
Last August 24, however, the Council of State rejected the appeal of the Ministry of Justice and the CSM, confirming the annulment of the resolution that had denied Facciolla’s confirmation in the management role. The decision followed the ruling of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, which had already annulled the administrative act.
Among the elements underlying the CSM’s assessment were the story of a judicial police note deemed false or anomalous and the alleged activity aimed at discrediting magistrates of the Catanzaro DDA. The Council of State noted that assessments of professional suitability cannot ignore the material consistency of the facts on which they are based. An administrative decision, although independent from the criminal judgement, cannot continue to be based on circumstances that are not confirmed or denied by the competent bodies.
Also on a disciplinary level, according to what was reported by the defence, Facciolla was acquitted of the charges relating to the alleged activity of discrediting his colleagues. The ruling of the Council of State, however, does not automatically lead to the return to the leadership of the Castrovillari Prosecutor’s Office: it is up to the CSM to adopt the consequent decisions, always, however, respecting the principles established by the administrative judges.
Lawyer Zecca, meanwhile, looks at the possibility that the legal matter may be concluded. The Prosecutor’s Office could still appeal to the Court of Cassation for the sole crime of forgery, he observes, but the lawyer considers this eventuality unlikely, also in light of the statute of limitations which, in his opinion, would intervene. A possible appeal, he adds, could be relevant above all for the possible disciplinary consequences, but also on this front he recalls the favorable outcome already obtained by his client.
“It wasn’t a normal process,” he concludes. «The disputes, the role played by Facciolla and the external consequences of the proceedings had made the case particularly delicate». The defender claims the collaboration provided by the magistrate from the early investigative stages and recalls the exceptions raised on some documents, while underlining his client’s willingness to answer the investigators’ questions.
After eight years, the final word invoked by the defense therefore seems closer. It remains to be seen whether the prosecution will decide to take the last available procedural route. On an administrative level, however, the CSM will have to follow up on the ruling of the Council of State. For Facciolla, the legal case records a new favorable outcome. The question about his professional future still awaits a response from Palazzo Bachelet (formerly Palazzo dei Marescialli).