The ruling from the Court of Cassation on the suspended mayor of Reggio Calabria Giuseppe Falcomatà, the main defendant in the “Miramare” trial, should arrive this evening and sentenced on appeal to one year in prison, with a suspended sentence, for abuse of office. The hearing has just ended and the deputy attorney general at the Supreme Court Roberto Aniello requested the annulment of the conviction because the crime is time-barred. This is the reason why the prosecutor was unable to ask for the trial to be postponed to a new Court of Appeal.
According to what transpires, in fact, during his speech, the magistrate explained that the fact perhaps should have been qualified differently and there could be doubts about the reconstruction of the story which cannot be dispelled, as the crime is prescribed. If the annulment requested by the prosecutor Aniello were to be accepted by the Court of Cassation, with the prescription of the crime the suspension imposed on Falcomatà by the Severino and the politician law would cease he would return to being mayor of the Municipality of Reggio Calabria and of the metropolitan city.
The «Miramare» trial arose from an investigation into irregularities in the procedures for awarding the Grand Hotel Miramare to an association, which allegedly took place without a tender.. 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. On appeal, Zagarella was sentenced to six months in prison as was the municipal secretary in office at the time, Giovanna Antonia Acquaviva, the former manager of the “Business services and economic development” sector of the municipality, Maria Luisa Spanò, and seven former councilors involved in the “Miramare” trial: Saverio Anghelone, Armando Neri, Rosanna Maria Nardi, Giuseppe Marino, Giovanni Muraca, Agata Quattrone and Antonino Zimbalatti. All are now awaiting the ruling from the Court of Cassation.