The list was kept from 2020 to 2021, as he had said publicly. The folder, with names and surnames of journalists, politicians and ordinary citizens, was found in the municipal offices during seizures in the corruption investigation
There is a folder of information, produced between 2020 and 2021, which contains newspaper articles, names and surnames of people, newspapers and social pages which had “offended” the mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro. This folder, which in total, including newspaper articles, would be composed of hundreds of pages, was produced by the offices that directly collaborate with the mayor, and was found in the office of the deputy chief of staff Derek Donadini in viale Ancona during a seizure.
The news came out today in La Nuova di Venezia and is stirring up discussion, if only because it would confirm something that Luigi Brugnaro said several times between 2020 and 2021, but which could have been taken as a “warning”, or a joke: “Whoever creates specious controversies should know that there will be a time they will be called to account for what they have done in this period. We have taken down names and surnames. We follow everything that is written day by day, and write it down. We don’t respond: we’ll talk about it another time” Brugnaro said during a Facebook live at the end of March 2020. He reiterated the concept, albeit less clearly, during a 2021 city council meeting.
It was the period of journalistic investigations by the newspaper “Domani” on the alleged conflict of interest, which first and later also involved the investigative program “Report” and then, in 2024, the prosecutor’s office, which closed the investigation a few weeks ago. “Domani”, which the mayor has sued, finds a lot of space in the folder, as does “Report”, dozens and dozens of pages each. But the problem, politically speaking, is another: the offices of direct collaboration with the mayor have spent a lot of time filing comment by comment, post by post, things written by city councilors and journalists, but also by ordinary citizens and satirical pages such as the Venice Goldon Awards, filling pages and pages of tables, imagining that they would get their revenge at a later time.
“Paranoid and serious to register citizens”. The mayor: “Right to do it”
The reactions were not long in coming, especially from those councilors who had already censured the mayor’s threats in 2020, without ever thinking that there were actually people dedicated to profiling.
“Mass profiling, paranoid and grotesque. This is what emerges from the documents seized during the Palude investigation, and what is surprising is the maniacal attention paid to anyone who dared to criticize the mayor in office. To be profiled it was enough to have written words like ‘grebano’, ‘arrogant’ or ‘bully’, which obviously do not even remotely constitute the crime of defamation. Honored to have been the object of such attention, we ask ourselves what and how many resources (municipal employees) were taken away from other tasks to carry out this dossier activity” writes the Terra&Acqua list, which with its councilor Marco Gasparinetti and many exponents finds ample space in the profiling.
“Lists of opponents. This harkens back to dark times. We had no doubt that we, councilors or opposition groups, were particularly closely watched, but that journalists were also in the ‘crosshairs’, this is very serious. It is unspeakable that satire was also ‘under fire’. We express solidarity and closeness. And, naturally, this pushes us to be even more effective in our opposition work”, comments Giovanni Andrea Martini of Tutta la Città Insieme, also included in the list of profiles.
“This council has repeatedly raised the possibility of legal action against us for the criticisms expressed by citizens and representatives of civil society, with statements that often had the whiff of a threat”, commented the municipal secretary of the Democratic Party, Monica Sambo. “Today we discover that, in addition to the words, there was a systematic monitoring of the opinions expressed, a practice that recalls the methods of anti-democratic regimes, and not of a free and democratic country like ours. I express my full solidarity with all the citizens and journalists who have been the object of this profiling, just for having criticized the mayor.”
Sources close to the administration give a different interpretation of the facts that emerged, maintaining that they simply took note of comments (more or less offensive) that could potentially lead to legal action, as already announced at the time. Today the mayor told reporters: “I think these are things that my technicians do and will continue to do. It is right that they do it, to keep a record of what I have suffered in order to govern this city.”
Source: Venezia Today
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