The Court of Review of Reggio Calabria canceled the seizure of the bank account in the name of Stefano Giampaolo, returning the seized sums to him in full.
The defender, the lawyer Gioacchino Genchi, made this known in a press release. Stefano Giampaolo is the father of Giuseppe Giampaolo (defendant in the proceeding called “Eureka”). The decision falls within the framework of the seizures carried out “during the execution” of the maxi operation of the Reggio Calabria Prosecutor’s Office on the hypothesis of international drug trafficking. In this context, Stefano Giampaolo, a third party completely unrelated to the charges leveled against his son, had been subjected to liens on various assets (property, car, banking relationships and more), seizures already subject to previous scrutiny and annulment by the Review Court. Only subsequently, Stefano Giampaolo learned that the entire balance of a further current account had also been affected: the one into which, as always, the salary received as an employee of Calabria Verde had flowed and, lastly, the credit of a loan granted by the bank a few days before the seizure was adopted, for the completion of the restoration work on a house, also subjected to seizure, a provision annulled by the Court of Review of Reggio Calabria on 12 September 2024.
«Despite the condition of impartiality of the owner of the relationship and the traceability of the sums – states Genchi – the request for release from seizure proposed by the defense was rejected by the GUP of the Court of Reggio Calabria, in accordance with the negative opinion given by the Public Prosecutor, an opinion also formed on the basis of the observations of the judicial police involved in the investigations. Precisely that rejection today makes clearly evident a recurring critical issue in real precautionary cases: when the seizure involves assets registered in the name of unrelated third parties, the effective exercise of the right of defense becomes, in fact, an obstacle course. The third party is neither under investigation nor accused, he has no “voice” in the merits of the main trial – underlines the lawyer. Genchi – and yet suffers the most immediate and disruptive impact of the measure: the blocking of resources, often intended for family support, for the payment of mortgages, installments, ordinary expenses and primary needs”.