The Court of Vibo Valentia has fully acquitted Maria Cicerone, wife of the alleged ‘Ndrangheta boss Antonio Mancuso, of the charge of aggravated fraud to obtain public funds. The woman was accused of having obtained an unfair profit, through alleged tricks and deception, in submitting loan applications to Arcea, the Calabria Region Agency for agricultural grants, and to the Calabria Region itself for the years 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, obtaining over twenty thousand euros.
According to the accusation contested against her by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Vibo Valentia, Maria Cicerone, owner of the individual company of the same name, would have attached to the financing applications two rental contracts considered fictitious and bearing false signatures, thus certifying the existence of the necessary requirements to access the expected economic benefits. Maria Cicerone’s defense, represented by the lawyer Giuseppe Di Renzo, contested the accusations made against the woman, demonstrating the absence of any artifice or deception. The public prosecutor had asked for Maria Cicerone to be sentenced to two years and six months in prison, but the judge accepted the defense theory, acquitting Mancuso’s wife “because the act does not constitute a crime”. A decision which, according to what the lawyer Di Renzo stated, “restores dignity and truth to an affair that should never have landed in a courtroom”.