Head of the Department of Prison Administration Giovanni Russo resigned, in his place Lina Di Domenico

The head of the Department of Prison Administration Giovanni Russo has resigned and his current deputy, Lina Di Domenico, will take his place. Russo is expected to go to the post of legal advisor at the Farnesina.

The change at the Dap is not yet official, but it would be linked - according to the Sappe (Autonomous Union of Penitentiary Police) - also to the difficult relations between Russo and the Undersecretary for Justice Andrea Delmastro. "Between Russo and Delmastro, that indispensable feeling between politics and administration to work together hand in hand had never been triggered," the union stresses.

Given the coincidence of the Christmas holidays, the process could take longer than normal and, again according to the trade unions, there should be 'no response from the Csm before 7 January'. It therefore remains to be seen whether Giovanni Russo will attend, as expected, one of the most important Jubilee events next week: the opening of the Holy Door by Pope Francis at Rome's Rebibbia prison on the morning of 26 December.

But Giovanni Russo's name is also at the centre of the controversy that has erupted over the affair of dossiers on politicians, which led the Perugia Public Prosecutor's Office to investigate former magistrate Antonio Laudati and financier Pasquale Striano. Before going to head the Dap, the magistrate was in fact the coordinator of the patrimonial law enforcement service of the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office, within which there was precisely the Suspicious Transaction Reports office. "My caution was to bring all the functions that took place in the Dna back within the established rules," he said in the hearing before the Anti-Mafia Commission. And he added, also putting it on record in Perugia, that he had already reported alleged 'anomalies' in Striano's behaviour to the then national prosecutor Federico Cafiero de Raho in 2020. "I have never seen that act," replied the latter, against whom the centre-right commissioners have long waged a battle for his resignation.