Searches at the Garante della Privacy: Stanzione investigated for embezzlement and corruption. Beacon on relations with Ita Airways

Searches are under way in the offices of the Garante per la Protezione dei dati personali (Italian Data Protection Authority): the Guardia di Finanza is conducting investigations as part of an enquiry by the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office in which the Authority's chairman, Pasquale Stanzione, is under investigation. Other members of the board are also under investigation: Ginevra Cerrina Feroni, Agostino Ghiglia and Guido Scorza. The alleged offences are embezzlement and corruption for the exercise of a function and for an act contrary to official duties. The file is coordinated by Deputy Prosecutor Giuseppe De Falco.

According to the accusation of embezzlement, the magistrates believe that the suspects 'in complicity with each other', 'having for reasons of their office the availability of public money, appropriated it by requesting reimbursements for expenses made for purposes unrelated to the exercise of office, for a total amount to be quantified'. Furthermore, they allegedly misused their official car, a Citroen C5X.

On the hypothesized side of corruption, it is alleged that always in conspiracy with each other they would have omitted "an act of their office, i.e. not providing any sanction if not a purely formal one to the company Ita Airways (in which, moreover, the data protection officer was, for the years 2022-2023, the lawyer Stefano Aterno, a member of the law firm E-Lex founded by Guido Scorza - a member of the board of the Guarantor, ndr - and of which the latter's wife is still a partner), against the finding of formal and procedural irregularities in the monitoring of communications and in the keeping of records relating to the processing of data, as well as making available their powers and their function in favour of the flight company, received as a utility "Volare" executive class cards, worth 6 thousand euros each.

According to the Guardia di Finanza's investigations, President Stanzione, who lives in Salerno, signed a lease in Rome in the central Piazza della Pigna, the amount of which was changed (or at least appears to be in the process of being changed) from the sum of EUR 2,900 per month to the sum of EUR 3,700 per month. this anomalous circumstance," reads the deeds, "which is currently being investigated in depth, goes hand in hand with another aspect worthy of investigative interest, i.e. the spatial contiguity of the aforementioned property where the President is said to live, with another property, located at a nearby house number, where a B&B accommodation facility is said to be in place, traceable to a company owned by the President Stanzione's daughters, whose relations with the Authority's reimbursements are currently being ascertained.

"I am calm," said the president of the Privacy Authority, Pasquale Stanzione, reached by reporters.