Milan: house arrest requested for Tancredi and Catella, jail for four others. Mayor Sala among those under investigation

This is a qualitative leap forward in the investigations that had hitherto focused on very technical issues, essentially the use of the Scia instead of implementing plans, a short road chosen by the Milan municipal administration, which relied on a 'facilitated' interpretation of complex and jumbled rules, born in the 1940s and then modified until the early 2000s, in a way that was not always consistent.

Now the central issue in the prosecutor's dossier is the presence of a real urban planning 'lobby', as has already emerged in part in the investigation into the 'Scalo House' project in Via Valtellina, which is now under sequestration. Architect Stefano Boeri, for whom the public prosecutor's office had already asked for house arrest, accusing him of bid rigging in connection with the choice of the Beic (the international library of culture) project, is also under investigation again. However, the gip had rejected the request. In this case he is only entered in the register of suspects, there is no request for precautionary custody.

The offence hypotheses hanging over the six main suspects range from bribery to ideological falsity and abuse of office. In the background is the alleged attempt to manipulate the town-planning law, through amendments to the so-called 'Save Milan law', drafted to block or slow down the investigations.In this context, Giovanni Oggioni, already arrested last March, was also moving, accused of having favoured building projects in exchange for hiring his daughter at the company Abitare In. Between 2020 and 2023, Oggioni's daughter is alleged to have received more than EUR 124,000 for jobs in that company, without any declaration of conflict of interest by her father, who was then an active member of the Landscape Commission. Oggioni is also alleged to have had a consultancy contract with Assimpredil Ance worth 178,000 euro, which allegedly allowed him to influence the approval of eleven building projects submitted by member companies.

The investigation hits Milan at a crucial moment: on the doorstep of the 2026 Olympic Games, with far-reaching public and private investment and an urban planning agenda loaded with expectations. The city, from a laboratory of building innovation and sustainability, now finds itself forced to question the transparency of its decision-making processes. The media impact of the investigation is already significant. The city council, which has made urban regeneration one of the pillars of its action, must now face questions about the resilience of the technical-administrative apparatus and the control of public-private interference.

The investigation is set to continue. In the meantime, the documents show that the strategies 'resulted in increasingly well-defined agreements with Unipol, Redo, Carfin, EuroMilano, LeandLease, Noods, Hines and Coima, Atm and Rfi (railways) and other parties in agreement with Tancredi'. It is also emphasised 'that Mayor Sala and General Manager Malangone also share and support the strategies of Marinoni and the companies involved', and that 'Tancredi, in tune with the mayor, has private relations with groups in the real estate finance sector to satisfy their interests'.

The next junction will be the preventive interrogations in front of Gip Fiorentini. It will be there that the suspects will be able to provide their version of the facts and that the judge will assess whether to confirm or mitigate the precautionary measures requested by the Public Prosecutor's Office. As things stand, the extension of the file to other subjects or the inclusion of further charges on the basis of the results of the interrogations and searches still in progress cannot be ruled out. In the meantime, the public debate questions the extent to which Milan's urban development model - considered a European best practice - is vulnerable to systemic corruption. Transparency, ethics and legality are back at the centre of the discussion, while Italy's most ambitious city faces an unprecedented reputational stress-test.

So there are 6 requests for precautionary detention made public today, 16 July 2025;
1) house arrest for the councillor of the Municipality of Milan Giancarlo Tancredi;
2) house arrest for the entrepreneur Manfredi Catella; founder and ceo of the Coima group, in the field of important real estate projects such as Milan Porta Nuova, the Pirellino, and the Biblioteca degli Alberi, in the Porta Garibaldi-piazza Gae Aulenti area; searches were carried out against him;
3) jail for the entrepreneur of the real estate company Bluestone, Andrea Bezziccheri, already under investigation or defendant in the files on the Park Tower in via Crescenzago 105 and on the Hidden Garden courtyard building in piazza Aspromonte;
4) jail for the former chairman of Milan's landscape commission, Giuseppe Marinoni;
5) jail for the architect Alessandro Scandurra (also a former member of the landscape commission);
6) jail for Federico Pella, "manager and partner of the engineering company J+S spa.

"I am convinced that I and my firm have acted correctly with regard to an architectural project, the so-called Botanical Tower, which it has long been known was decided not to be built. I trust that the judicial authorities will ascertain as soon as possible that I am completely innocent of the improprieties that are being accused of.

This was stated by architect Stefano Boeri, regarding the new strand of investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office into urban planning management in which he is under investigation for a work that was never built and is part of the larger 'Prellino' project.

'Councillor Tancredi is talking to his lawyers before taking any action'. This was made known by Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala, in a note released while a face-to-face meeting is underway between the first citizen and the councillor for Urban Regeneration, Giancarlo Tancredi, for whom the Milan prosecutor's office has requested house arrest as part of the new strand of the urban planning investigation. The mayor of Milan also added: "I think it is necessary to have a more complete picture of the findings that are emerging in these hours. I can only say that the administration does not recognise itself in the reading that is being reported'. "For several months, the municipal administration has been on a reorganisation path and has taken new measures," Sala recalls in the note. "The latest events," the mayor adds, "will have to be understood and evaluated so that the valuable path undertaken is not thwarted.