The Palermo Prosecutor's Office has requested the arrest of the former vice-president and former councilor of the Sicily Region, the lawyer Gaetano Armao, husband of the former head of Cabinet of the Ministry of Justice, Giusi Bartolozzi. The lawyer's offices in Palermo and Rome and his home were searched, as announced by the investigating office. The prosecutors hypothesize the crime of corruption. In addition to Armao, the magistrates, coordinated by the prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia, requested precautionary measures for 8 people including the lawyer Pierluigi Matta and some entrepreneurs.
Armao, a well-known Sicilian lawyer and politician, was president of the specialist technical commission for environmental authorizations under regional jurisdiction until August. As required by law, given the profession of the suspect, who is a lawyer, a magistrate from the Public Prosecutor's Office is attending the searches, which also concern some regional offices. The 9 people involved were notified of an invitation to appear before the investigating judge for preventive questioning, an act which, according to the new legislation, precedes the judge's ruling on the request for a precautionary measure.
There are three episodes of corruption of which Gaetano Armao is accused. Taking advantage of his roles as expert of the president of the Sicilian Region Renato Schifani and president of the Specialist Technical Commission for environmental authorizations of regional competence, through his accomplice, the lawyer Pierluigi Matta, Armao allegedly pocketed money from some entrepreneurs in exchange for favours.
The bribes would have formally turned out to be fees collected by Matta for consultancy that was never actually carried out. The lawyer would have withdrawn the money paid by bank transfers to his account and then delivered it in cash to Armao.
The first dispute concerns 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.
Prison has been requested for Armao; house arrest for the two managers. According to the prosecutors, the former vice president of the Region, taking advantage of his knowledge, would have introduced the group's leaders into the Region's environments and in particular into the Departments of the Environment and Energy; it would also have been spent on speeding up the process of the procedures of interest to the group pending before the technical commission of which he was president and which concerned the release of the environmental impact assessment and the single regional authorization provision. Furthermore, still as president of the commission, he would have chosen the officials to whom the proceedings would be assigned.
The second episode concerns alleged favors done, again with the intermediation of Matta, to Sergio Vella, owner of Seap Bio Energy srl. Armao would have identified the officials to whom to assign the preliminary commission investigation for the release of the environmental impact assessment in relation to a project for the construction of a plant for the selection of waste and the production of biomethane in the municipality of Aragona, in the Agrigento area. In exchange he would receive a bribe. The money, this time too, would have been formally given to Matta for a consultancy that was never carried out and by Matta delivered to Armao,
Finally, again for illicit compensation, the lawyer, as an expert of the President of the Sicilian Region Renato Schifani, in exchange for a bribe of 6 thousand euros, would have put pressure on the former director of the Department of Health Salvatore Iacolino, later 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 non-profit organization, involved in the sector. For this accusation Armao is being investigated in conjunction with Matta, who would always act as an intermediary between the company and the lawyer, and the president of the non-profit organization Luigi Zancla. House arrest was requested for the latter.
