“Up to 800 euros to find a burial in the Rolls”, arrested the former director of the cemeteries

Former director of the Rotoli cemetery arrested. The police carried out this morning an order of preventive detention at the home issued by the investigating judge of the Palermo court against Cosimo De Roberto, investigated for corruption and extortion. “It was found that, after paying undue sums of money (up to 800 euros), he tried to find illegally -reconstructed by the Provincial Command- the burial arrangements, without observing the strict chronological order imposed by the cemetery regulations.”

Already last February the soldiers of the Investigative Unit had begun investigations to clarify some circumstances that had a bearing on the emergency that “exploded” in the summer in the Rolls cemetery, where over time accumulate around 500 nudes waiting for the burial. At the end of the first investigative phase, the carabinieri notified 8 guarantees for municipal employees on duty at the cemetery on Via Papa Sergio I and Reset, also causing De Roberto’s resignation. The emergency had political aftermath, which subsequently led to resignation of former councilor Roberto D’Agostino.

After losing a portion of his government, Mayor Leoluca Orlando assumed responsibility for cemetery services in an effort to get the ship back on track. On July 24, when D’Agostino had left city hall for just a week, the mayor was heard as witnesses in the Prosecutor’s Office during a long hearing. The central theme of the investigation was precisely the chronic emergency and the coffins stacked in the Scrolls. According to the researchers, given the situation, there was a risk that someone would have accepted money to find a place even for those who did not have the right, thus altering the natural order of things within the cemetery.

“As a result of an articulated investigative activity, characterized among other things by investigative investigations resulting from the discovery of anomalous practices within the cemetery offices, the carabinieri – they conclude from the provincial command – have documented the occurrence of conduct, shock and corruption against the aforementioned director of cemeteries. The very serious deterioration of the city’s cemetery was also highlighted, in which the bodies awaiting burial remain stored for several months, causing hygiene and health problems ”.