Open investigation, Renzi and other suspects acquitted. The Iv leader: "I lived as a pest". Salvini: "Good, we are guarantors".

Matteo Renzi has been acquitted by the gup of Florence Sara Farini for the investigation into the Open foundation, set up to support the Iv leader's political initiatives when he was secretary of the PD. With him, Maria Elena Boschi and all the other nine suspects, including former minister Luca Lotti, businessman Marco Carrai and lawyer Alberto Bianchi, were also acquitted.

Renzi, Boschi and Carrai were only charged with the crime of illicit party financing. Among the other offence hypotheses contested by the prosecution were also trafficking in influence, bribery, self-laundering and issuing invoices for non-existent transactions. According to the prosecution, Open - whose president was Bianchi and whose board of directors included Boschi, Lotti and Carrai -, would have acted as a real party branch, and in particular of the PD current linked to Matteo Renzi. About 3.5 million euro of the money that, according to the prosecution, would have arrived in the coffers of the body from 2014 to 2018 in violation of the rules on party funding. The accusations were contested by Renzi, who also waged a battle of complaints against the prosecutors in the investigation. The preliminary hearing opened on 3 April 2022 and went on for more than two years, including an appeal to the Constitutional Court on the conflict of powers. In the courtroom today, Deputy Prosecutor Luca Turco - owner of the investigation with Prosecutor Aldo Nastasi -, who will retire on 24 December.

"I am almost fifty years old. The last five I have lived as a 'plaguee' because of the incredible Open investigation. An absolute scandal for all those who had read the papers, but despite this I was politically slaughtered by many, starting with Fratelli d'Italia and the Five Star Movement. After years of suffering today comes the news: acquitted. I am acquitted, all my friends are acquitted, both politicians like Maria Elena and Luca and professionals like Marco, Riccardo, Alberto and all the others. Today many should apologise, Meloni and Travaglio in primis. They will not. Peace'. Thus on X the leader of Iv Matteo Renzi.

"Thanks to Agnes for being a rock and it wasn't easy. Thanks to Francesco, Emanuele and Ester for never doubting their father. Thanks to all the defence lawyers, starting with Gian Domenico Caiazza, Federico Bagattini and Lorenzo Pellegrini, to my friends, my colleagues, my collaborators for everything. They wanted to take me out with a sham investigation. They didn't succeed. Let's start again together,' he explains. 'But let's not forget that there are many innocent citizens who cannot defend themselves. We will continue to do politics for them too. With a smile and without revenge. But with the certainty that today justicialism has lost and justice has won. And those who attack me with investigations, regulations, ad personam campaigns do not frighten me. On the contrary, it makes me stronger'.

"The Open case is also closed. Finished. It never existed, I would like to say, but I cannot say that because - although for a shorter time - it accompanied and followed me in my work as a Member of Parliament of the Republic. And it was a case that hurt me a lot because it was an ugly accusation, an accusation of those that even naming them hurts for those who, like me, have always believed in politics that wants to do, in politics as a service and as a commitment to the common good,' Luca Lotti wrote on Facebook. 'Surely I have made mistakes,' he adds, 'surely not all the decisions I have taken were the right ones, but surely in taking them I have never broken the law and I have never done it to benefit someone or something. Now a judgement says so. I am left with regret for those who cowardly used the Open case to take personal revenge for something else. I know, it is politics, but today it is the only thing that remains for me from this affair,' Lotti concludes.