Corruption at Mazara Municipality: Eleven requests for trial.pagano

Last Updated: July 26, 2024

Corruzione al Comune di Mazara, undici richieste di rinvio a giudizio

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Marsala has requested the indictment of eleven individuals, including three officials from the Municipality of Mazara del Vallo, involved in an investigation by the provincial command of the finance police on crimes (corruption and rigged contracts) allegedly committed in the context of the awarding procedures to some companies for maintenance works on water and road networks.

The investigations, as explained in a statement from the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Marsala, were carried out between 2019 and 2020 with “technical activities, searches, seizures, and examination of a large amount of documentation” and have “allowed to circumstantiate a consolidated probative framework regarding the existence and operation, at the Municipality of Mazara del Vallo, of a management system of assignments by public officials to the benefit of certain economic operators, assignees of almost all hydraulic and road maintenance works through the adoption of “direct assignment” procedures or, alternatively, in the so-called “emergency sum,” receiving for themselves and for others the bestowal of gifts, offerings, and various services.”

The action of the municipal officials would not have been limited “to just corruptive phenomena – investigators explain – having revealed further conduct leading to acts that could disturb the contracting party’s freedom of choice by the public administration, illicitly directing the administrative process of awarding contracts in favor of some participants involved in corruptive behaviors, as well as, through the use of artifices and deceits consisting of documenting costs higher than the amounts actually incurred, they misled the public administration, which paid higher sums not due, causing them unjust profit with equal damage to the public entity.”