Appeals rejected, Viola confirmed as Milan prosecutor
The Lazio Regional Administrative Court confirmed the appointment of Marcello Viola as public prosecutor of Milan, decided on 7 April 2022 by the CSM and challenged by two other candidates, Giuseppe Amato, prosecutor of Bologna, and Maurizio Romanelli, added to Milan. The former attorney general of Florence, a Sicilian from the province of Agrigento, had been preferred by the plenum to the other two candidates with thirteen votes, against 6 for Romanelli and 3 for Amato.
The appeal rejected by the regional administrative court of Lazio was based on issues related to the assessment of the requisites that Viola possessed: the Roman judges, accepting the arguments of the lawyers Girolamo Rubino and Giuseppe Impiduglia, however, they considered that the prevalence over the other two was fully legitimate. With reference to Romanelli’s appeal, the Tar highlighted how the CSM had correctly recognized the greater importance of the managerial functions performed by Viola, these being “wider and more complex than the semi-managing functions and being the figure of the deputy prosecutor in any case subordinate to that of the public prosecutor at the Tribunal”.
The current prosecutor of Milan, again according to the sentence of the TAR, had also gained superior “directive experience”, given that, after having been prosecutor in Palermo, he had been appointed prosecutor of Trapani (“territory heavily infiltrated by the presence of mafia organizations” ) and Pg in Florence, an office “of primary importance on the national scene”. Amato, head of the DDA of Bologna, had relied precisely on the fact that he himself had held a “management position in a district attorney’s office” and on the long duration of the performance of these functions.
On the other hand, for the purposes of the appointment, according to the sentence, only “the concrete exercise of judicial functions in the sector of organized crime”, which Viola can boast, as well as more than ten years of experience, is relevant. In 2019 Marcello Viola had been in pole position for the appointment as head of the Rome prosecutor’s office: thanks to the poisons of the Palamara case, however (and although he was always unrelated to any issue, legal or just moral), his appointment was been set aside and at that point he himself had been the protagonist, this time in the role of “appellant”, of an appeal on the assignment of the task to Michele Prestipino; with two separate appeals, he and Francesco Lo Voi, at the time chief prosecutor of Palermo, had managed to obtain the annulment of the CSM’s decision. Palazzo dei Marescialli subsequently chose Lo Voi, but then entrusting Viola with the equally prestigious Milan prosecutor’s office. Where, however, the Sicilian magistrate found himself forced to defend himself against the appeals of others.
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