The corruption charge holds up. Almost a month after the preventive interrogation, the investigating judge of Palermo ordered house arrest for the former vice-president of the Region, the lawyer and professor Gaetano Armao, according to the prosecutor's office of the capital at the center of a ring of bribes pocketed through the lawyer and friend Pierluigi Matta. According to the judge, there would be serious indications of guilt against the politician and his colleague and for both there would be a risk of repeating the crime despite the fact that they no longer hold the roles they had at the time of the alleged commission of the crimes.
"The termination of some positions eliminates the opportunities directly connected to their exercise, but does not necessarily have a neutralizing capacity with respect to a risk that is deduced, as in the case in question, from the repeatability of an operational scheme", explains, in fact, the judge. The entrepreneur Luigi Zancla, also accused of corruption, is also under house arrest, while the requests for precautionary measures put forward for the other 5 suspects were rejected: managers, entrepreneurs and the regional deputy of Mpa Giuseppe Geremia Lombardo.
Armao was filmed on several occasions by police cameras taking envelopes of money from Matta and hiding the money in a grandfather clock. According to prosecutors, these were bribes received for favors given to entrepreneurs. "Only fees for common causes", defended the former politician.
Three incidents were contested: the first concerned the bribes that, on several occasions, the vice president of the Region allegedly received from Giuseppe Argirò and Marco Malacarne Gentile, respectively CEO and co-director of the CVA group, a company from Valle D'Aosta that operates in the field of renewables. Taking advantage of his knowledge, Armao would have introduced the group's leaders into the Region's circles, he would also have worked to speed up the process of the practices of interest to the group pending before the commission and would have chosen the officials to whom the proceedings would be assigned.
But if there are serious indications of guilt for Armao and Matta, who had acted as a consultant for the company, the situation changes for the managers. According to the investigating judge, there is no proof that they knew "the money transfers from Matta to Armao and their connection with the compensation paid to Matta by the company". The second episode concerns alleged favors done, again with the intermediation of Matta, to Sergio Vella, owner of Seap Bio Energy srl. Even in this case it would not have been proven, according to the investigating judge, "that the entrepreneur had given Matta a mandate to stipulate a corrupt pact or to unduly remunerate Armao".
Finally, as an expert of the President of the Sicilian Region, in exchange for 6 thousand euros, Armao would have put pressure on the former director of the Health Department Salvatore Iacolino, then investigated for external complicity in a mafia association, to block the decree which expanded the number of companies dealing with palliative care in agreement to favor the Samo onlus, involved in the sector. For this accusation Armao is being investigated in conjunction with the president of the non-profit organization Luigi Zancla who has been placed under house arrest.
