Urban planning investigation, for the General Prosecutor's Office of the Supreme Court the prosecutors' appeal for Catella must be rejected

For the General Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Cassation it is a no: the appeal in Cassation by the Milan Prosecutor's Office against Manfredi Catella, Coima's CEO, involved in the investigation into Milan's urban planning, must be rejected. For the Cassation Prosecutor's Office, therefore, the Court of Re-examination, which in August released Catella from house arrest ordered by the gip at the request of the public prosecutor's office, which had accused him of corruption and induction to give and promise benefits, would be right.

The attorney general, referring to the relationship between Catella and Alessandro Scandurra, then a member of the Landscape Commission, accused by the prosecutors of conspiracy to commit bribery, argued that the panel 'has taken good care of the principles' indicated by case law, 'believing that it must be demonstrated that the performance of the act contrary to the duties of office was the cause of the provision of the utility to the public official'. Basically, as the act states, the opinion of the re-examination judges is shared that 'the findings in the file do not demonstrate the formation or operation of a corrupt agreement between Scandurra and Catella as CEO of Coima'. Moreover, according to the public prosecutor's office, it is not demonstrable that the contracts 'can be traced back to a corrupt agreement rather than being related to professional activities actually performed by Scandurra and regularly accounted for'.

This request - which concerns Catella but also extends to more general considerations on the enquiry - marks a point in favour of the defence, within a complex affair that calls into question not only criminal responsibility but also politics. At the heart of the investigation is in fact the role of Milan's Landscape Commission, which in the last decade has assumed decision-making and authorising powers while in other cities it is generally only an advisory and support body. According to the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office, it is here that a 'corrupt pact' is alleged to have taken place between the professionals who were part of it - even though they carried out work for private companies -, the former town planning councillor Giancarlo Tancredi, and real estate operators.

A thesis substantially shared by the gip, which partly lightened the charges but nevertheless imposed last summer precautionary measures on the six main suspects (Scandurra, Catella and Tancredi in addition to former commission chairman Giuseppe Marinoni, entrepreneur Andrea Bezzicheri and planner Federico Pella). Measures were then revoked for all of them by the Court of Re-examination, which, however, expressed different opinions for each profile. In particular, the re-examination judges expressed the opposite opinion to that of the prosecutors on the Scandurra case, probably the most striking case of how prosecutors and judges of Liberty have different views on the case. A different view also emerges on Catella, as we read in this act of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Supreme Court.

The Court of Cassation will rule on 12 November for all suspects.