Scalea, Appeal of Perrotta rejected: Mario Russo’s candidacy legitimizes for the judges

The Court of Paola rejected the appeal filed by the minority councilor and former mayor of the Municipality of Scalea, Giacomo Perrotta, against the candidacy of Mario Russo, then elected last May new mayor of the Municipality on the Tyrrhenian Cosentino. Perrotta was sentenced to the expenses of Lite in favor of Russo, as well as the Municipality of Scalea and the Ministry of the Interior, resistant in the procedure. The judges rejected the appeal considering it unfounded. On the merits, the Court believed that the sentence of one year and six months of imprisonment for abuse of office and auction disturbance imposed by the Court of Paola in Russo and became definitive in 2017 is not to be considered founded as a cause of incandidability for subsidy extinction and abolition of crimes. In March 2025 the Paolani judges had in fact declared the crimes for which Russo had been sentenced extinct. Furthermore, last July, with its own ordinance, the Court of Paola had revoked the sentence for abuse of office, a crime repealed in Italy in 2024. At the time of the candidacy for the municipal elections of Scalea, therefore, the legal impediments that perrotta attributed to him did not exist for Russo. The judges also clarified that the Municipality of Scalea and the Ministry of the Interior could not be involved as attributed in this case because they are lacking in passive legitimacy.