Conte just forgives his father-in-law. It is the most ad personam law in history – Time

It was an ad personam rule that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte inserted from its first draft in the relaunch decree of May 19 to decriminalize the delay or non-payment of the tourist tax to the municipalities.

So much ad personam that it has been applied retroactively to a single person: Cesare Paladino, a Roman entrepreneur at the head of an important real estate group that among other things owns (and manages) the prestigious Grand Hotel Plaza in the capital. Cesare is the father of Olivia, the beautiful girlfriend of the Italian premier who is also his partner and is also the general manager of the Plaza Hotel (as defined by the structure’s Instagram site). He has built a small empire, but he must be a bit distracted, because between 2014 and 2018 he forgot to deposit all or part of the tourist tax in the coffers of the municipality of Rome, which, however, had been paid regularly every night for the Clients of the Plaza: poor Virginia Raggi was missing a sum of just under 2 million euros from that structure alone. According to Italian law, such non-payment was a crime until May 19, embezzlement. And in fact, Conte’s “father-in-law” was accused of that before the Rome court by the deputy prosecutor Paolo Ielo and by the prosecutor Alberto Pioletti. A little over a year ago, however, returning the money owed to the municipality of Rome and adding a small compensation and the interest that had passed, Mr. Cesare agreed with the prosecutor a plea agreement of one year, two months and 7 days precisely for embezzlement. Having agreed on the prosecution and the defense, no one has appealed and that sanction has become final, undoubtedly representing a significant shadow in the life of the businessman.

However, when in May the blow of the sponge arrived at the hands of Conte, which from that moment annulled the criminal sanction for the delayed and omitted payment of the tourist tax by the hotelier, transforming it into a simple administrative offense with a fine to pay The prime minister’s father-in-law waited for the rule to become law and immediately afterwards asked to retroactively review that sentence before the Rome court. Like him, obviously, also other hoteliers who had had similar sentences. But so far they have all gone badly. Ms Valeria Di Bono, owner of a hotel residence in Trapani, appealed for a review of her criminal sentence which was one year and four months and the court said no. So he appealed to the Supreme Court of Cassation and to the sixth criminal section (president Stefano Mogini, rapporteur Orlando Villoni) on September 28 took away all hope: the decriminalization was not applicable to a sentence prior to the date of May 19 and therefore “must finally reaffirm the criminal relevance for the misappropriation of the conduct, including that attributed to the plaintiff, committed prior to the novatio legis referred to in article 180, paragraph 4, of decree law No. 34 of May 19, 2020 “. Such a clear ruling by the Supreme Court constitutes jurisprudence. And so it happened with all hoteliers who have to uphold their conviction for embezzlement. All except one, who by curious coincidence is Conte’s father-in-law. The gup of Rome, Bruno Azzolini, despite the opposition of the Rome prosecutor, accepted Cesare Paladino’s appeal, revoking the sentence of one year and two months for embezzlement “because the act is not provided by law as a crime.”

There is not a single case, even in the long series of legends released in substantial conflict of interest by previous governments, of a request so ad personam that it exclusively concerns a relative of the legislator, in this case the Prime Minister. This case, therefore, will go down in history as a unicum that if it had ever been imagined in the times of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Renzi, it would have caused a tsunami and street demonstrations. Instead, this news is passed on in silence, and even when in recent months someone had tried to argue without even knowing how it would end, they were immediately silenced, claiming the most colossal of fake news: that the new regulations approved by Conte were necessary. to help hoteliers in distress due to the pandemic. A totally false justification: the hoteliers in distress did indeed need substantial financial aid that never came, but this new rule nullifies a criminal offense and applies instead (but certainly after May 19) a penalty equal to 100 or 200% of the evaded tourist tax. It is clear that it is not financial aid, quite the opposite. But at this moment Conte’s father-in-law has enjoyed, the only one in Italy, the retroactive blow that bleaches his criminal record. And the new sanction for administrative infraction that would cost between 2 and 4 million euros has not been applied. Because this, on the other hand, is not retroactive, and it would be difficult for an entrepreneur who has a thousand difficulties to pay the amount owed to the tax authorities, so much so that it has punctually adhered to all possible scrapping of tax records. Even the last one, launched by the Conte government. He was granted a 12-month installment, but he paid the first installment and stopped doing it with the following, because he asked the Tax Agency to distribute that installment in 18 months and not in 12 months. The liquidity problem is obvious.

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This will also be a short story of a country that has a thousand and one serious tragedies, but it says a lot about the true personality of those who run the government from Palazzo Chigi and the sense of the common good cultivated: first father-in-law and girlfriend, then Italians. . In this case I miss the “then” …