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The Milan court ordered the seizure of more than half a million euros for the former MEP Lara Comi and five other suspects. In the center the accusation of aggravated fraud against the European Parliament for the achievement of public funds. According to the prosecutor’s request accepted by the judge (investigation coordinated by prosecutors Silvia Bonardi, Adriano Scudieri and Luigi Furno) a large part of the salaries of at least two of his assistants would have been pocketed by the Comi itself. The disputed and seized amount is 525 thousand euros and covers the two mandates carried out by Comi a Brussels, from 2009 to 2019. The seizure decree for the purpose of confiscation by equivalence refers to two charges for the same crime. Besides Comi there is five other suspects. The former loyalist of Silvio Berlusconi as well as the former provincial coordinator of Fi is currently under investigation by illicit financing in the investigation of the anti-mafia in Milan called Mensa dei Poor. The political proximity between Comi and Nino Caianiello, alleged director of bribery.
The history of the scam in the European Parliament is a consequence of the soup kitchen. The investigation is made public in May 2019, but already in February theEuropean Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) After receiving an anonymous complaint, he denounced “some alleged irregularities to the detriment of the EU budget and serious breaches of professional obligations by Lara Comi”. The documentary acquisitions and especially the testimonies close the circle of the accusation. So much so that the Prosecutor’s Office wrote: “Lara Comi” has “systematically and absolutely unscrupulously he inclined his public office for personal purposes by committing a series of crimes in order to drain money from the coffers of the European Union ”.
There are two episodes in dispute. The first and latest concerns a scam of 104 thousand euros. Here the person hired “fictitiously” is Giovanni Enrico Saia also investigated. As investigated, it is the so-called “third provider”, that is, the one that receives public money and passes it to the assistants of the parliamentarians. It is about Gianfranco Bernieri which will be related to a first assistant hired by Comi from 2010 to 2015, pocketing, according to the accusation, more than 400 thousand euros. Saia in an initial report explains that he received his salary (about 2,800 euros per month) in cash at Bernieri’s office in Milan. False reconstruction, we will see it later, and above all agreed with people close to Comi. Bernieri himself explains to prosecutors. “When Comi told me to hire Saia, unlike the other hires, she asked me not to pay the employee’s salary, but to make the payment to herself that would personally liquidate Saia (…). Checks supported for monetization were consistently delivered to the Lara Comi and of Renato Comi (Father of the former MEP, not investigated) “. The money extracted from the checks, according to the reconstruction, was placed in envelopes kept in a safe, from there it was withdrawn and handed over to the politician or relative. The trace of these modalities can be found in reading the chats of Giannipio Gravina, owner of a communication company and local contact person for Comi. Here Gravina, also investigated, talks about “envelopes”. The method will be confirmed by the minutes of an assistant of the Bernieri’s mediator.
After all that Saia put in front of her salary payment receipts signed by Comi, she explains: “I have never seen these documents, I should have signed them, I can’t explain why they are signed by Lara and Renato Comi.” In the end, Saia admits and explains that Comi and the people close to her “they managed to get everything they wanted from me“. Saia will accept the position” both because he had no other job prospects and because of the prestige of the position. “
According to the indictment, Lara Comi is not alone in leading the scam in part. At his side, in the prosecution too Giannipio Gravina. “It was he – continues Saia – who told me that if they had listened to me (the prosecutors, ed) I would have had to declare that I had taken this money from Bernieri.” In fact, this is the first version of Saia that shows “fear” of Lara Comi’s friends. Gravina himself, who emerges from the documents and the analysis of telephone records, used the Saia prepaid card for vacations in Monte Carlo and Courmayeur. Then, in the summer of 2019, with the Mensa dei Poveri investigation and Comi’s name already in the newspapers, Gravina runs into Saia at the restaurant. “Gravina silenced me peremptorily. I remember him saying: it is better for you too if you do what I tell you. They have nothing in their hands. Do what I tell you, rest assured that we will take care of you, we will also pay the lawyer ”. He then instructs him on how to behave during an interrogation. Saia explains: “Gravina said: answer the questions briefly without dwelling on it, otherwise you risk ending up, remember that you have to cancel the talks between you and me.” The magistrates state: “The investigations found that Saia was deliberately hired as a local assistant to former deputy Lara Comi so that other people could benefit financially from her occupation. The calculation, as mentioned, it stops at 104 thousand euros from 2014 to 2017. The rest of the sum for which the kidnapping was ordered comes from the salary received by a former assistant who worked for Comi from 2010 to 2015, receiving 522 thousand euros. Of these 311 thousand ended up in Lara Comi “directly or through their parents.” However, the damage recorded to the EU is 422 thousand which, added to the first 104 thousand, brings the total figure to 525 thousand euros.
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