Milan town planning enquiry: Tancredi replies to the gip, Marinoni silent

The former chairman of the Landscape Commission of the Milan City Council Giuseppe Marinoni chose to avail himself of the right not to answer in his interrogation before the gip. "There is no corruptive episode, nor any system as it is outlined by the Public Prosecutor's Office," said his lawyer, announcing that the defence has filed a brief defence brief only on the precautionary requirements and that Marinoni will defend himself "in the trial". For him, the prosecutors of the investigation on urban planning in Milan are asking for jail time.

One does not arrest a person for 'the outrage of the Prosecutor's Office or civil society for ethically questionable behaviour', Marinoni's defence emphasises in the brief filed this morning. The precautionary requirements," reads the seven-page document in which lawyer Eugenio Bono asks to exclude the danger of reiteration of the crime, flight, and evidential pollution, and to recognise less afflictive measures such as interdiction from the profession or house arrest, "serve to 'prevent a concrete and current danger', while the Prosecutor's request 'is based on moral judgments'. For the defence lawyer, the entire investigation on town planning would be of 'disproportionate amplitude' and 'set up as a trial of building speculation against the entire city of Milan'.

This morning, the preventive interrogation of the former councillor for Urban Regeneration Giancarlo Tancredi, whom Milan's public prosecutor's office is accusing of corruption and had requested house arrest, also took place over the course of an hour and a half. Tancredi, defended by lawyer Giovanni Brambilla Pisoni, filed a defence brief requesting the annulment of the request for precautionary measures, and answered questions from public prosecutor Mattia Fiorentini. Despite his resignation from his position in the council on 21 July, the public prosecutor's office reiterated the request for arrest to the gip.

"I have nothing to say. I have spoken with the judges and you have to have respect for them,' Tancredi told reporters at the end of the face-to-face meeting with the gip. Tancredi is one of the main suspects in the file opened by the Milan prosecutor's office on the alleged irregularities in urban planning procedures in the Lombard capital. "Tancredi has answered all the questions, he has not shirked anything", explained the pm Tiziana Siciliano after the interrogation on the seventh floor of the Milan Court.

The public prosecutor's investigation has been going on for years in various strands. There are currently 74 people under investigation, including Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala and Coima's CEO, Manfredi Catella, who will be questioned this afternoon.