The Court of Reggio Calabria has pronounced a sentence of no place to proceed against Antonio Archinà and Giuseppe Coluccio, accused of trafficking in illicit influence aggravated by mafia facilitation in the context of a case dating back to 2012. The judge for the preliminary hearing Andrea Iacovelli established that “the fact does not exist”, thus closing the proceedings arising from some wiretaps relating to an alleged attempt to influence the outcome of the appeal process against Rocco Aquino, figure believed to be at the top of the coterie called “Aquino-Coluccio”. The complaint from the District Anti-Mafia Directorate concerned a conversation that took place on 20 February 2013 between Archinà, 48 years old from Siderno, and Coluccio, 60 years old from Marina di Gioiosa Ionica. According to the accusation, Antonio Archinà exploited his relationship with a former parliamentarian to obtain from Giuseppe Coluccio the promise of money or other economic benefits in exchange for an illicit mediation aimed at favoring a more benevolent decision of the Court of Appeal of Reggio Calabria towards Rocco Aquino, as part of the trial resulting from Operation Crime.
The Reggio Gup considered, however, that the elements collected did not allow the accusation to be supported, arriving at a more favorable ruling on the merits than the simple declaration of limitation, which would also have been applicable for the time that had elapsed since the facts, accepting the defense arguments, represented by the lawyers Vincenzo Nobile and Beatrice Coluccio, for Coluccio’s position, and by the lawyer Roberto Rampioni in the interest of Archinà.
At the center of the decision is the interpretation of the crime of trafficking in illicit influence in light of the legislative changes that have occurred in recent years. The sentence recalls in particular the reform introduced by law no. 114 of 2024, the so-called “Nordio reform”, which narrowed the scope of the criminal offense by requiring not only the existence of relationships with a public official, but also a concrete and intentional use of such relationships to carry out the proposed offence. According to the judge, the new regulations have determined a sort of “partial abolitio crimesis”, intended to operate retroactively in cases where the contested conduct no longer falls within the current regulatory definition. Analyzing the content of the wiretaps, the magistrate highlighted how it was Coluccio who was the first to hypothesize a possible interest of the former parliamentarian, asking Archinà if the latter was able to activate useful contacts. However, in the judge’s reconstruction, no actual “spending” of the relationship by Archinà emerges, nor any concrete activation towards the public official indicated. On the contrary, the conversations would reveal doubts, perplexities and a substantially passive attitude on the part of the accused, who would limit himself to receiving the requests of his interlocutor.
The sentence also underlines how the entire illicit project remained at the stage of mere hypothesis. The same intercepted dialogues, according to the Gup, would show the uncertainty of the protagonists regarding the real possibility of involving the parliamentarian or other influential subjects. In fact, there is a lack of concrete contacts with the public official which could have led to an attempted corruption or incitement to corruption. The reasons also refer to a previous sentence of the Court of Appeal of Reggio Calabria which had returned the documents to the Prosecutor’s Office for further evaluation. The same provision, the judge observed, described a situation in which Archinà appeared to be the recipient of solicitations coming from circles attributable to the ‘Ndrangheta, rather than the promoter of an illicit activity aimed at influencing the work of the judiciary. For the Gup, therefore, the elements collected allow at most to recognize embryonic preparatory acts, however lacking the concreteness necessary to integrate an attempted corruption into judicial documents or a real incitement to corruption. Hence the conclusion that leads to the full formula of acquittal.