One candidate for every 170 voters and the shadow of the ‘Ndrangheta: Valle d’Aosta votes again. And there’s also the convict (1st degree) Rollandin

In Aosta Valley approximately one voter in 170 is a candidate in the next regional elections, Ansa calculated based on 67 thousand voters of the last elections. The 12 lists in the race feature more than 350 names that will compete for 35 seats on the council, in a region that has just 125,000 inhabitants. One of them is led by Augusto Rollandin, known as the Emperor, six times president of the Region between 1984 and 2017 and historical leader ofUnion Valdôtaine, the autonomist party that has always been hegemonic, today threatened by the Salvinian rise. Protagonist of numerous legal events, sentenced in 2019 in the first instance for corruption, therefore suspended by the regional councilor in the last legislature, Rollandin returns to the voters under the banner of his brand new creation. For autonomy. The audience of aspiring Valdostanos administrators is even higher, given that there is also a vote for the municipal councils of Aosta and other places in the Alpine region with special status.

But it is not the only record of this designation: the Valley goes to early voting for the first time in seventy years (the first elections were in 1949), after the fall of two councils in two years and two earlier.‘ndrangheta who have local earthquake policy. In December 2018, the council chaired by Nicoletta Spelgatti de la Lega Vallée d’Aoste, the Salvinianos del Valle, in office for five months after the popular vote had punished theUnion Valdôtaine for the first time in history. Giving him the relative majority, but with insufficient numbers to govern (19% against 33% in 2013). On the other hand, the Lega was rewarded, at 17%, after twenty years that the Northern League in the Regional Council could not even enter it.

Accused of inaction, abandoned by some allies, Spelgatti was forced to leave the chair, then touched Antonio Fosson of the Mixed Group – local reference of Communion and Liberation, former Union senator and Rollandin councilor, supported by a handful of progressive-leaning autonomist lists, including Union.

However, not even Fosson managed to complete the mission: in December 2019 his condition was made public. under investigation for political electoral mafia exchange in an investigation by District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Turin (also responsible for the Valley) on the conditioning of the 2018 regional authorities by the ‘Ndrangheta. The investigation revealed that Fosson had met Giuseppe Petullà, accused of being head of the premises in Aosta. Two months of administrative paralysis followed and, in February 2020, the dissolution of the Regional Council, determined by the impossibility of finding an alternative majority. Hence the early elections.

Fosson is not the only politician affected by the mob investigations in the last legislature. On January 23, in the investigation Geenna, the regional councilor ended up in jail Marco Sorbara, also elected with the red-black colors of the Union, accused of foreign competition and he too – according to the accusation – electorally supported by the ‘ndrangheta. A councilor from Aosta and a councilor from Saint Pierre are also in prison. If that wasn’t enough, from research Egomnia, a continuation of Gehenna, it turned out that according to the researchers well Seven regional councilors of the 35 elected in 2018, all belonging to local autonomist forces, had the support of the local ‘ndrangheta of Aosta.

All this occurs in a territory marked by recurrent acts of administrative misappropriation, linked above all to the almost total presence of the public sector and the flood of financing and benefits that the State has historically guaranteed to the autonomous community. In addition to the aforementioned research on Rollandin, it is enough to recall the failure of the Casino of San Vicente, pending a pre-bankruptcy hearing and at risk closure after being used for decades by local authorities as a customer reserve (in 99% of the regionally owned gambling house, a procedure for fraudulent bankruptcy). However, due to cuts and the economic crisis, in recent years the river of public money has dried up a lot, sending into the crisis a model that had managed to guarantee widespread benefits. And contributing to the political-judicial upheaval in recent years.

Now, close to the vote of September 20-21, from the courtroom in Aosta where the trial of Geenna, the prosecutor of the Turin Dda Stefano Castellani exhumed an unpublished interception of July 18, 2000, captured in an investigation into the ‘Ndrangheta that later did not materialize in a trial. The transcripts, however, said what two suspects, Santo Pansera and Santo Oliverio, said: “We must scale the Unión Vald partyumbrellamystery, we have to put our men in the Vald Unionumbrellataine. “” It is exactly the same as we recorded in this trial, “proclaimed prosecutor Castellani,” the same pattern. “A confirmation of the fact that the ‘Ndrangheta in the region has been active and has had relationships with institutions for at least forty years, something known to initiates, but a recent discovery for public opinion, including local. Upon entering the classroom, the former regional councilor Sorbara was received by the overwhelming of a group of family and friends. For him, the prosecution asked 10 years in prison The sentence was set on September 17. Three days before the vote.