Toti pleads guilty to bribery and illicit financing: he will do socially useful work

A twist in the corruption investigation that has rocked Liguria. Giovanni Toti has reached an agreement with the public prosecutor's office to plea bargain for two years and one month. Now the decision will be up to the gup who will have to schedule a hearing. The sentence Toti is plea-bargaining with the prosecution will be replaced with socially useful work for 1,500 hours. The agreement between the prosecutors and lawyer Stefano Savi also includes temporary disqualification from public office and the inability to contract with public administrations for the duration of the sentence and the confiscation of EUR 84,100. The bargained offences are improper corruption and illegal financing. A plea bargain agreed with the prosecution also for the former president of the Port Authority of Genoa Paolo Emilio Signorini.

"In the agreement between the prosecutors and the former governor's defence, the prosecution recognises that Toti never personally benefited from the sums collected by his political committee, which were only used for political activities," says lawyer Stefano Savi in a note on Toti's plea bargain. 'It is also recognised,' Savi continues, 'that the acts produced by the public administration were totally legitimate, as were the payments in the form of contributions to political activity. Therefore, the charges of corruption and the other offence hypotheses are dropped, with the exclusion of the so-called 'improper corruption', i.e. for legitimate acts of the offices'. "At the end of more than three years of investigation, continuous wiretapping, stalking, filming and almost three months of house detention, the agreement provides for a sanction of approximately 1,500 hours of public utility work and the restitution by the Toti Committee of the sums directly contested."

'Like all settlements, they arouse opposite feelings: on the one hand the bitterness of not pursuing our innocence to the end, on the other the relief of seeing a good part of it recognised'. This is Giovanni Toti's comment after the plea agreement. "There remains that 'context' crime defined as improper corruption, linked not to acts but to attitudes, a charge that is difficult to prove due to its evanescence, but equally difficult to dismantle for the same reasons," the former governor continues.

A plea bargain agreed with the prosecution also for former Genoa Port Authority chairman Paolo Emilio Signorini. His lawyers Mario and Enrico Scopesi have agreed with the prosecution on a sentence of three years and five months and a confiscation of just over EUR 100,000 in addition to temporary disqualification from public office. In this case too, it will be the judge for the preliminary hearing who will grant the request.