• Mafia. Former Saguto judge acquitted of abuse of office
  • Illegal management of confiscated property, Silvana Saguto removed from the judiciary

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February 20, 2020A sentence of 15 years and ten months. This is the request for punishment made by the Prosecutor of Caltanissetta against the former president of the Prevention measures section of the Court of Palermo, Silvana Saguto, accused of being at the center of a corrupt system that would have illegally managed the assets seized from the mafia. For Saguto's husband Lorenzo Caramma, the Nissian magistrates asked for nine years and ten months, while for his son, Lorenzo Caramma, six months.

A sentence of 12 years and three months was sent to Gaetano Cappellano Seminara, lawyer, judicial administrator. For the other judicial administrators, Walter Virga and Nicola Santangelo, requested two and ten years and eleven months of imprisonment respectively, while for the university teacher Carmelo Provenzano the prosecution asked for eleven years and ten months. For another university professor, Roberto Di Maria, the prosecution took four years and four months, while for Maria Ingrao five years.

Among the defendants also Calogera Manta, for which the prosecutors asked for four years and six months, and the colonel of the Dia Rosolino Nasca: for the latter, the Prosecutor of Caltanissetta made a sentence of eight years and a month. In the list of defendants also the ex prefect of Palermo Francesca Cannizzo: six years were requested for her. The request for punishment for the former judge of the Prevention measures section of the Court of Palermo, Lorenzo Chiaramonte, was two and a half years. Finally, the prosecutors asked for absolution for Vittorio Saguto, Silvana's father, and for Aulo Gigante.

The 'Saguto system', the tentacles on the seized goods
"A perverse and sprawling system created by Dr. Saguto who exploited and mortified her role as a magistrate". Very harsh words pronounced at the start of the indictment, last January, by the prosecutor of Caltanissetta who today asked for a heavy sentence - 15 years and 10 months - for the former president of the Prevention measures section of the Palermo courts, Silvana Saguto. The requests for co-defendants also endure.

"Do ut des", outside the judiciary
On March 29, 2018, she had been removed from the judiciary by decision of the disciplinary section of the CSM, which had imposed the maximum penalty, that of removal from the judicial order. "Silvana Saguto's" daily conduct "is of" immense gravity ":" In the time span in which she was president of the preventive measures section of the Palermo court, there was not a day when she had no task at least one disciplinary offense ", underlined the P. of Cassation Mario Fresa," violated the duties of correctness, diligence, reserve and balance: justice was suffocated by personal interests that were the only driving force, in a perverse logic of 'do ut des' ". The prevention measures section" was - said Fresa - an employment office for gold assignments ".

Family and patronage model
Magistrates, judicial administrators, professionals. All pieces of a vast and consolidated "system", which gave shape to a "criminal, family and clientelistic management model", as the Caltanissetta prosecutor had defined it when on October 20, 2016 it ordered the seizure of assets for about 900 € thousand paid by Silvana Saguto and some judicial administrators.

Then the first circle of this complex investigation closed in a sensational and almost paradoxical way: a seizure of assets to those who managed the confiscation machine. Saguto, her husband Lorenzo Caramma, the lawyer Gaetano Cappellano Seminara, former king of the judicial administrators, were the first three names included in the notice of conclusion of the investigations for crimes ranging from association to crime, to corruption to abuse of office, passing through forgery, fraud and embezzlement. Seventy-nine indictments.

Black collar
The group of magistrates, lawyers, judicial administrators and investigators allegedly managed the assets seized and confiscated in Palermo, a city in which the maximum number in Italy of this type of measures was registered in a privatistic manner and with a series of favoritism. More than one hundred and thirty reports of hiring information from people informed of the facts were drawn up, the magistrates had explained; dozens of targeted documentary acquisitions have been made, at various Sicilian judicial offices, at the universities of Palermo and Enna, at the prefecture of Palermo and the Council of administrative justice for the Sicily Region.

The judge's "daisy"
Analyzed the documents of over fifty prevention procedures, often with the related liquidation measures, according to the magistrates, "a spiral trend and a method of progressive feedback between the results of the interception activities, analysis of the acquired documentation and examination of the people knowledgeable about the facts that made it possible to weave the collected elements closely together, to make them talk in order, to give body to the 'system' ".

As described by a judicial administrator - injured person of the crime of extortion, Silvana Saguto "had exclusive relationships with the people who interested them", according to a form "daisy-chain, that is without there being any interference between the relationships that belonged to her" , reports that saw her at the center, and from which "petals" and "rays" departed, not communicating with each other, represented by professionals, judicial administrators, colleagues, clerks, judicial police officers, representatives of the university world and journalists, " from which he drew various advantages and benefits ". The suspects "had managed to structure the activity of the Prevention Measures Section and the management of seized assets according to criminal organizational models, and to create an illicit enrichment system based on family and patronage criteria".