Corruption for the exchange of seats: Carlo Fidanza, Meloni’s European dolphin, negotiates one year and 4 months

Only two days ago Carlo Fidanza, head of the Fdi delegation to the European Parliament, declared: “We are working for a blockade with the EPP, but there is harmony with the liberals”. Today the news: the MEP Carlo Fidanza and the deputy Giangiacomo Calovini of Fratelli d’Italia, who had ended up being investigated for corruption, negotiate a one year and 4 month term. In particular – according to the investigations by prosecutors Giovanni Polizzi and Cristiana Roveda – the former municipal councilor of Brescia Giovanni Acri (also from Fdi) would have left his office on June 25, 2021, causing the first of the unelected to take over the municipal council. to say Calovini – who later became a deputy, always close to the political current of Fidanza.

In exchange, and we are at the point, he would have obtained the hiring of his son Jacopo Acri, as assistant to MEP Fidanza. According to what was claimed by the prosecution, Fidanza would have promoted the alleged illicit agreement in order to be able to assign a position to Calovini who represented the internal current of the party. The plea agreement provides for the requalification of the charge: from corruption for an act contrary to official duties to corruption for the exercise of the function.

And in addition to the conditional suspension of the sentence, the plea agreement also provides for Calovini, defended by the lawyer Andrea Puccio, and for Fidanza, assisted by the lawyer Enrico Giarda, no application of accessory penalties, such as the disqualification from public offices, and therefore the possibility for them to continue to be in Parliament.

In any case, a investigating judge will have to express himself on the instances. At the moment for Acri and another suspect, Giuseppe Romele, former Lombard deputy coordinator of Fdi, no similar plea bargaining requests have been presented, as far as we know, after the closure of the investigations by the Milanese prosecutors which dates back to last January.