The Supreme Court annulled the conviction and Giuseppe Falcomatà he returns to being the mayor of the municipality and metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria.
The sentence of the “Miramare” trial arrived in Rome in the evening where the deliberations of the Supreme Court concluded and, in essence, accepted the lawyers’ request Marco Panella and Giandomenico Caiazza who this morning had requested the annulment of the sentence issued in November 2022 by the Court of Appeal of Reggio Calabria which had sentenced Giuseppe Falcomatà to one year in prison, with a suspended sentence, for abuse of office and the other defendants in the trial to 6 months .
The trial arose from an investigation into irregularities in the procedures for awarding the Grand Hotel Miramare to an association. In 2015, the property was granted without any public tender to the “Il sottoscala” association, attributable to the entrepreneur Paolo Zagarella. At the center of the investigations, in fact, were the alleged relationships between Falcomatà and Zagarella who, on the occasion of the 2014 municipal elections, had given the mayor of Reggio Calabria some of his premises free of charge to house the political secretariat. According to what transpires, the Court of Cassation would have evaluated the voluntary desistance of the defendants who, after having entrusted the Miramare to the Zagarella association, had revoked the assignment.
This morning, the deputy attorney general at the Court of Cassation Roberto Aniello he had asked for the sentence to be annulled due to the statute of limitations, explaining that the fact perhaps should have been qualified differently and there could be doubts about the reconstruction of the story. Doubts which, however, could not be resolved, as the crime would be time-barred in any case. Hence the cancellation that reopens the doors of Palazzo San Giorgio in Falcomatà.
The Court of Cassation annulled the appeal sentence also for the other ten defendants. Among these, in addition to the municipal secretary in office at the time, Giovanna Antonia Acquavivato the former manager of the «Business services and economic development» sector of the Municipality, Maria Luisa Spanòand to the entrepreneur Paolo Zagarellathere are the seven former councilors involved in the «Miramare» trial: Saverio Anghelone, Armando Neri, Rosanna Maria Nardi, Giuseppe Marino, Giovanni Muraca, Agata Quattrone and Antonino Zimbalatti. The suspension imposed by the Severino law is also ended for them. If Falcomatà becomes mayor again, the former councilor Giovanni Muracadefended by the lawyer. Sergio Laganà he enters the Regional Council from where he was suspended after the appeal conviction.