Bitter receipts for the former mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, sentenced on appeal to 2 years in prison for forgery and embezzlement with disqualification from public office for the duration of the sentence. The ruling overturned the first instance pronouncement, from which the former mayor was acquitted. The case concerns spending sprees with the city's credit card. Marino was instead acquitted of the charge of fraud for alleged irregular payments to an employee of his non-profit organization Imagine.
Returning to the receipts affair, when he was mayor Marino would have paid for dinners for friends and relatives with the Campidoglio credit card for a total of 13 thousand euros.
According to the prosecutor's office, "26 of the 54 dinners took place on holidays or days before holidays and this circumstance leads us to consider that these were meetings that took place in times free from institutional commitments". Furthermore, many restaurateurs recognized "in Mrs. Marino - as we always read in the appeal request presented to the judges - the mayor's diner".
So far the embezzlement. But Marino would also have given instructions to his secretariat to create the necessary justifications to pass off those meetings as institutional, hence also the accusation of forgery.
As for the non-profit organization "Imagine", the dem surgeon was involved in relation to certifications drawn up between 2012 and 2014 for fees relating to services provided by fictitious collaborators, with an alleged scam of around 6 thousand euros against INPS. The prosecutors have always maintained "the defendant's effective awareness of the artificiality and falsity of the operation carried out", but the second judges acquitted him.
Only in the evening did a note arrive with the reaction of the former mayor who announced the appeal to the Cassation. “The Court of Appeal – writes the former tenant of the Campidoglio – condemns the entire representation activity of the mayor of the Eternal City. In practice, the judges maintain that in 28 months of activity, the mayor has never organized representation dinners but only private meetings. A datum that contrasts with the most obvious reality and the most elementary logic. I can't help but think that this is a sentence with a political flavor just as two important electoral deadlines are approaching for the country and for the Lazio Region. I am embittered even if I am calm with my conscience because I know that I have never spent 1 public euro for private purposes".
