«I’ll open a brothel for him and he will remember it for the rest of his life»: last summer Totò Cuffaro and Luca Sammartino signed an electoral pact between the DC and the League which shook the balance of power in the Schifani council. But a year earlier, between February and May 2024, they had reached loggerheads: the former president of the Region said he was ready to argue with the number 1 of the Northern League “until his death”.
The battleground is the leadership of the Western Sicily reclamation consortium. There Cuffaro has long placed a loyalist, Gigi Tomasino, who also ended up in the investigation of the 18 for whom the Prosecutor’s Office requested the arrests on Monday. The importance of that position is linked to the possibility of controlling the tenders for a maxi loan of 280 million for public works. The situation degenerates when Sammartino, Councilor for Agriculture, decides to remove Tomasino’s powers with a change to the organisation’s Statute. Tomasino warns Cuffaro, who does not hesitate to take the initiative: «If he wants to continue on this path I will start to break his balls. Let’s start the war.” To defuse the tension, Carmelo Pace, group leader of the DC (also under investigation), tries to intervene. And it was decided to summon Sammartino to Cuffaro’s house for an attempted agreement. Curious detail: Cuffaro suggests to Tomasino that he is present but hidden in another room. And so it happens. The meeting, however, degenerates.
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