Final acquittal for Massimo Galli in the investigation into competitions conducted at the State University

The legal case of Massimo Galli, the infectious disease specialist on the front line during the Covid pandemic, who ended up as a defendant in one line of the investigation into the alleged competitions piloted at the Faculty of Medicine of the State University of Milan, ended with a full acquittal. This morning the Court of Appeal cleared him and Agostino Riva, his former collaborator, also for the remaining charge of forgery contested due to a report which was found to have an incorrect timetable. The judges, declaring that "the fact does not exist", canceled the sentence of 1 year and 4 months, with a suspended sentence and no mention, imposed at first instance.

The fourth Court of Appeal of Milan confirmed the first degree sentence where Galli and Riva were acquitted for the main crime, and canceled the sentence imposed in the first degree only on the infectious disease specialist and which concerned a forgery. "We are satisfied with the outcome of the trial which recognized the correctness of the professor's actions", commented his defender, the lawyer Giacomo Gualtieri of the Bana firm. "This proceeding shouldn't even have started. Today justice has been done", declared Luca Troyer, Riva's lawyer. The Milan Prosecutor's Office had appealed by asking the judges of second instance to overturn the sentence with which the Court, based on the jurisprudence of the Cassation, had maintained that in this case neither the crime of disturbing the freedom of auctions nor the abuse of office before the reform that repealed it could be considered. In their appeal, the prosecutors requested to accept the conclusions they formulated at the end of the indictment with which they had proposed a sentence of 1 year and 10 months for Galli and 6 months for Riva, holding them both also responsible for the crime of falsification of a public document. Today, however, the double acquittal arrived "because the fact does not exist".