14 individuals face trial for ‘False on balance sheet’ at Leonforte Municipality

Last Updated: October 17, 2023

The Enna Prosecutor’s Office has requested the indictment of 14 individuals, including politicians, administrative officials, and members of the oversight body, for aggravated public document forgery. This comes as a result of investigations by the financial police into the financial statements of the Municipality of Leonforte, which has been in financial crisis since 2015 and admitted into a multi-year financial restructuring procedure. According to the investigations, it was revealed that the suspects, in their public functions, created and certified false revenue projections without justification or based on illegal measures. They also deliberately underestimated expenditure forecasts, concealing debts of the municipality. This, according to the prosecution, provided a false representation of the management results from 2015 to 2019 in order to hide the actual financial deficit of almost 6 million euros that the municipality faced, which had become structural over time. The official technical consultant appointed by the Prosecutor, from the General Inspectorate of Finance of the General Accounting Office of the State, reached similar conclusions after an administrative and accounting audit conducted at the municipality. Approving the false budgets for the period 2015-2019 compromised the correct assessments by the control section of the Court of Auditors, enabling the municipality to continue with the approved financial recovery procedure in 2015 and to wrongly incur expenses exceeding the allowed limits (at least 1,500,000 euros) by submitting false certifications to the General Accounting Office of the State for budget balancing purposes. This allowed the municipality to evade the penalties imposed by the Stability Pact, which limited the expenses of the entity to prevent any potential damage to public funds. The matter has been referred to the competent accounting judiciary for further evaluation.