Liguria, “the only solution is resignation”. The judges’ blackmail of Toti revealed –

It is in the technical choices that might favor partisan interests and not in the strictly political activity of Giovanni Toti, Ligurian governor under house arrest since last May 7 for corruption, that “the persistent dangerousness of Toti is inserted, who – not by chance – is accused of having exchanged economic benefits with the adoption of specific administrative measures and certainly not of having adopted ‘political’ choices in his role as president of the Region”. This is one of the passages with which the judges of the Review Court of Genoa rejected the defense’s request to revoke house arrest.

The Court of Appeal therefore considers it correct to have authorised Toti so far «to hold several meetings with a clearly ‘political’ purpose, since it is a question of outlining the strategic guidelines for the management of the Liguria Region and not seeing any precautionary danger in the dutiful performance of such activity» – which responds to the popular mandate received from the governor – but for the judges «it is quite another thing to deal with the concrete forms, and the related personal contacts, with which those objectives on a technical-administrative level are achieved: an activity that might well continue if domestic custody were replaced». In this sense – since restrictions cannot be applied to individual categories – it will be up to the magistrates in charge of the investigation “to examine each time the individual requests for authorization to meet formulated in Toti’s interest and evaluate their purely ‘political’ and not also technical-administrative scope: an operational sector, the latter, in which it has been said that there is a concrete probability that the defendant will repeat conduct of similar disvalue trusting in the misunderstood sense of ‘protection of public property’ which he admitted to having been inspired by at the time of the facts in the relationships he had with Spinelli and Moncada and which, on the basis of a seriously circumstantial framework not even formally contested, to date appear to be correctly classified in terms of corruption” is stated in the judges’ provision.

And following the Review Court’s decision, Stefano Savi, Toti’s legal defender, spoke to the press outside the Palace of Justice in Genoa: “With this type of approach and with the need reiterated by the Review Court not to interfere with political-administrative activity, the only solution that would cut the head off the bull would be that of resignation. The mere fact that there is a provision that is at least partly expected – the lawyer emphasizes however – does not in itself automatically constitute any prerequisite for changing anything. Toti is finishing reading the 33 pages, I do not believe he has yet developed future prospects, certainly the provision will be evaluated from all points of view. For what can come of it in terms of political choices, it is a decision that deserves consideration”.