Maxiprocesso Nebrodi: sentencing requests for 1,045 years in prison and 30 million euros in confiscations

1,045 years in prison were requested by the Messina DDA against 101 defendants in the Nebrodi Mafia trial.

The Prosecutor's Office, led by Maurizio De Lucia has also asked for confiscations of money and assets for over 30 million.

Harsh penalties for a trial held in record time and which saw the involvement of 4 pm: the adjunct Vito Di Giorgio, the magistrates Fabrizio Monaco, Antonio Carchietti and Alessandro Lo Gerfo. 

The process stems from the operation called "Nebrodi" which, in addition to reconstructing the organization chart of the Messina clans, discovered a millionaire scam, committed by the clans, to the detriment of the EU. 

The investigation, which culminated in the trial, led to 94 arrests and the seizure of 151 farms on 15 January 2020.

It was

and the most impressive, in terms of investigations on fraud on European Agricultural Funds ever carried out in Italy.

The investigation, carried out by the Guardia di Finanza of Messina and the Carabinieri of the ROS, found that the clans had for years unduly collected European resources for over 5.5 million euros, scoring

, the body that disburses the funds allocated by the EU to agricultural producers. 

The

, who, also thanks to the help of a compliant notary and officials of the Agricultural Shopping Centers (Cca), who instruct the procedures for access to European contributions for agriculture, have collected rivers of money.

The two clans, instead of fighting each other, joined forces, virtually dividing the plots of land, in very large areas of Sicily and even outside the region, necessary for the requests for subsidies. 

"This - wrote the investigating judge who ordered the arrests at the request of the Messina DDA - with very serious pollution of the legal economy, and with the deprivation of huge public resources for honest operators". 

The scam was based on the identification of "free" land (ie those for which no applications for contributions had been submitted).

To report the useful plots were often the employees of the Cca who had access to the databases.

The availability of the land to be indicated was obtained either by requiring the real owners to enter into false rental contracts with mafia names or through false notarial deeds. 

On the basis of the fake availability of the particles, the procedure was instructed by complicit officials to request the sums which were then credited to the nominee applicant of the bosses often on foreign accounts.

"The fraudulent perception of the sums - explained the investigating judge - was possible thanks to the complacent contribution of white-collar workers, Agea collaborators, a notary, managers of the Cca centers, who had the necessary know-how to procure the infiltration of mafia crime in the vital ganglia of these mechanisms for the disbursement of public spending and who knew the limits of the control system ". 

Handle

Giuseppe Antoci

The former President of the Nebrodi Park, Giuseppe Antoci

“We hit the land mafia with unprecedented action - declares Antoci - rich, powerful and violent, and that's why they wanted to stop me that night.

They wanted to block the idea of ​​a national law and therefore everything that is happening today.

Today's prosecutor's request for conviction, at the end of two years of trial, gives me hope for an equally rigorous and exemplary sentence.

”- continues Antoci. 

“They took away everything, freedom, serenity, they forced me into a complicated life by forcing my family to live in an armored house guarded by the Army.

However, two things have not been able to take away from me: life and dignity and it is thanks to the latter that I will await the sentence to be able to look them in the eye and be able to tell them:

.