Even if it were approved today, the law which lengthens the statute of limitations – however all yet to be defined, and stalled in the Senate – would not save the proceeding against the Mose Bribes, already destined to never see completion.
“While we absolutely consider passage of the law a priority, in all intellectual honesty I have to say that any provision we pass will not have any value on proceedings already underway, based on the criteria of non-retroactivity, but it can serve to avoid the repetition of situations of this type in the future”, so in fact declared Minister of Justice Andrea Orlando, responding at the Camera to the questioning of M5S parliament members Cuzzolino and Businarolo who requested specific information on the outcome of the reform and of the Mose proceeding underway in front of the Tribunale di Venezia. A process already “dead”: the statute of limitations begins, in fact, in September for the accusation of illicit finances of the parties, then passing to crimes of corruption. By the summer of 2018 all will be “scrapped” and there will be neither condemnation nor absolution for the “Mose scandal” because justice has arrived too late with respect to the facts. While not forgetting the forty settlements with related compensation, it took the Prosecutor to put a firm point on the responsibility.
“Mose, the largest public work, with a value of over 5 billion, has generated bribes of over a billion Euro, a ring of corruption that has involved every level of politics: from the City to the Region, from Parliament to ex-Ministers”, said Parliament member Emanuele Cozzonlino, of the M5S, “in September 2017 all of them will be able to return home, thanks to the statute of limitations. There is a firm law because the PD and the other parties do not have the will to fix this fundamental law which precludes justice for the citizens.” For Minister Orlando – who has asked Parliament to put the law on the calendar, as has also been requested by Ocse and Consiglio d’Europa – “the situation in Veneto is particularly critical, with 50% of Appeals and 13% in Tribunale at limitation.” The Minister has announced the “reinforcement of the Veneto administrative offices, with the assignment of 37 new posts, 10 of which are for Venice, and another 10 from the slide of the rankings”, recalling the protocol with the Veneto Region for the temporary use of Regional personnel in the courts, “great attention will be given to the Veneto in the competition for 800 positions already announced. The forces of the Magistracy have been reinforced, providing 29 more judges and 11 pm in the Veneto Tribunals, and a similar intervention will be done for the Court”. But the M5S parliamentarians are not satisfied. “The response has left us profoundly disappointed”, said Businarolo, “because when Minister Orlando affirms that any law would not have retroactivity it is something we have always said, that if Parliament had moved quickly and we would not have lost two and a half years, with the related crimes subject to limitation. This is a grave offense, an immense shame for all the citizens and we cannot help but point out how guilty and complicit is this political class.”
-Source, La Nuova di Venezia, Feb. 2, 2017
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