Urban planning enquiry, Mayor Sala also investigated. Councillor Tancredi 'willing to resign'

The mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, is also under investigation as part of the urban planning investigations for which prosecutors have requested six arrests. The most obvious hypothesis would be falsehood, in relation to the appointment of Giuseppe Marinoni as head of the Landscape Commission, on which a conflict of interest would have weighed heavily. Sala, however, could also be under investigation for  undue inducement to give or promise benefits in relation to the 'Pirellino' project, a building sold to Coima by the municipality (for the sum of 175 million in 2019, using the public auction method) and then signed by architect Stefano Boeri.

"The Pirellino? We sold it in 2019 and we are still at a standstill. It's been six years and the work has never started,' the mayor explains. 'Other than induction, it was a continuous discussion because we never agreed on what they could do'. The second case concerns the appointment of Marinoni. 'The composition of the Landscape Commission is managed by a special structure of the municipality that selects the profiles and decides the members,' the mayor told the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera. 'The relationship between the mayor and the commission is practically nil. I would add that I have never had Marinoni's number"..

In the meantime, the councillor for Urban Regeneration Giancarlo Tancredi, for whom the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office has requested house arrest as part of the enquiry into urban planning management, has told Mayor Giuseppe Sala, who is also under investigation, that he is "available" to resign. This was learnt from circles close to the councillor..

At this point, the investigations into town planning have turned into something else, namely a much broader investigation into the presence of a 'lobby' in the sector in Milan: under the lens is the alleged intermingling of public and private affairs, with overlapping and repeated roles. After having started from the hypothesis of the crime of illegal subdivision and possible conflicts of interest, we have now arrived at the charges of corruption, forgery and induction to give or receive benefits.

Yesterday the public prosecutor's office asked for house arrest for Giancarlo Tancredi, town planning councillor, and for Manfredi Catella, Coima's managing director, the man who signed important projects in Milan such as Porta Nuova and Piazza Gae Aulenti. Two also very strong blows for the Sala junta. After the investigations against Sala, the case now becomes political, obviously opening up reflections for the mayor and the junta.