ROME – At the meeting at the Mozzi-Borgetti Library in Macerata, the commissioner for post-earthquake reconstruction, Guido Castelli, told the prefect Giovanni Signer, the unions and the employers' associations that he will continue to pay the company Rest Edile srl, which has had its historical administrator, the architect Enrico Crucianelli, in prison in San Macuto (Ancona) for 18 days. The next funding will arrive on November 25th.
Marche: bribes and mafias, the other earthquake that shakes Acquaroli
by our correspondent Corrado Zunino 05 November 2026
The company, a monopolist within the earthquake crater, has 415 active construction sites and 10 million euros in cash - the current accounts are free, the credits have been seized by the judiciary -. It is therefore in a position to pay the 270 internal workers, almost all of whom are registered as first-time labourers. Those construction sites will remain active, those workers will be paid on the 15th of the month, but the subcontractors, included in the companies accused of being linked to the 'Ndrangheta and the Camorra, remain outside the reassurances of Castelli and the new administrator of the Tolentino company.
The Egyptian aediles
No certain data were offered on this point at yesterday's meeting, which lasted almost three hours, but the unions estimate that the subcontracting workers could number around 1,500. If the number is correct, it means that there are 1,230 construction workers - mostly foreigners, in particular North Africans - who today have no guarantee of receiving the agreed salary.
Some of the laborers and bricklayers have already left the crater of post-earthquake reconstruction, particularly the Marche region, but there are those who have remained and have decided to report this major problem to the authorities. Yesterday morning, eight Egyptian workers climbed onto a crane in Ussita, the epicenter of the earthquake of 30 October 2016 in the Macerata area, and made public, thirty meters above the ground, that they have not received emoluments for four months. They were not paid by the subcontractor company. They came down, convinced by the police, only when they were assured that the company that obtained the work directly will take care of the salary - for now. This in Ussita, it must be said, is not a "Crucianelli construction site".
In recent days in Tolentino three workers, also in this case Egyptians, had climbed onto a crane to protest against missed payments.
Castelli: “Powerless against companies”
Commissioner Castelli said, again at yesterday's meeting, that he cannot do anything against a company that takes out so many contracts (899 of those awarded to Crucianelli): "It's free competition." He recalled that in the last two years the Ministry of the Interior has issued 102 anti-mafia interdictions against companies that wanted to work on the earthquake construction site and that, since 2021, these injunctions have been signed for 170 companies: "What was discovered by the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate is a system that was based on falsification and fraudulent actions, an anomaly of the reconstruction".
The unions: preventive checks
The unions do not agree with the anomaly theory and ask for a different management of the construction site crater: a crackdown on subcontracting, preventive checks, companies that communicate salary payments every month, the use of indices that attest to the health of a job (number of workers, adequacy of salaries), the definitive introduction of the construction site badge. Daniele Principi, secretary of the CGIL of Macerata, confirms: "To date there are no guarantees for the workers' supply chain, we need a permanent crisis table and a mapping of the workers".
Of the 899 contracts obtained by Crucianelli, 860 were awarded within the province of Macerata: 396 have been closed, 415 are in progress and 88 are to be activated.
From today, and for the next ten days, the Review Court will express its opinion on the request for the release of the entrepreneur Crucianelli and Fabio Pistarelli, the former head of cabinet of the President of the Marche Region, Francesco Acquaroli. Pistarelli is also detained in San Macuto and is in a cell with four other people including the former president of Civitanovese football, Giuseppe Cerolini, in prison for an investigation into a million-dollar VAT fraud. The former chief of staff wrote his defense while in prison.
Questions about the leak
This morning in the Regional Council the ten questions from the opposition on the topic of "reconstruction and corruption" to President Francesco Acquaroli were discussed, but the governor did not show up, leaving the undersecretary to the presidency of the council, Silvia Luconi (Brothers of Italy), to answer. The minority parties rebelled: "It lacks respect for the citizens."
Regarding the leak of information on the judicial investigation, which would have led to the president's lack of confidence in Fabio Pistarelli, a leak hypothesized by the judge for the preliminary investigations, Sonia Piermartini, the undersecretary said: "As already specified by Acquaroli, the context of the resignation takes place in unsuspecting times, due to the disappointing contribution to expectations and only after the three-month renewal. In November 2025, however, rumors emerged that led to the resignation of Pistarelli after 26 days was reduced to a few weeks because, even in the face of hypotheses of inappropriate behavior, this was enough to terminate the employment relationship.
Tomorrow the preliminary interrogation of five suspects in the investigation.
