Mimmo Russo, former FDI councilor in Palermo
Mafia and vote swapping in Palermo, former FdI councilor Mimmo Russo arrested
The carabinieri of the provincial command of Palermoat the first light of dawn today, executed a precautionary custody order – issued by the Judge for preliminary investigations at the Court of Palermo at the request of the local District Anti-Mafia Directorate – against three people (one of whom confined in prison and two subjected to house arrest), held responsible, in various capacities, for external complicity in a mafia association, extortion aggravated by the mafia method, corruption, trafficking in illicit influence aggravated by having favored the mafia association.
The restrictive measure arises from the investigations conducted by the Investigative Unit of the Carabinieri of Palermo, in the period 2020/2023, delegated by the DDA of Palermo, the results of which made it possible to acquire a serious circumstantial framework, substantially accepted in the aforementioned precautionary orderregarding the relationship of mutual convenience existing between a trade unionist, local administrator of the metropolitan municipality, in office until June 2022, and exponents of the Palermo “cosa nostra”.
It emerged from the investigations the existence of a committee of interestswhich also included a fixer belonging to the masonryengaged in construction of a shopping center in the Sicilian capital. In this context, the political exponent worked in favor of the approval of a variant to the city master plan, aimed at changing the destination of the land on which the structure was to be built from “agricultural green” to “commercial area”; he would have obtained – as a counter match – a large number of hires in the construction of a shopping center, to be promised to subjects linked to organized crime, in exchange for the electoral support of the mafia organisation.
The investigation also revealed the heavy interference that the politician exercised towards the company that manages the Palermo racecourse, conditioning his actions so that he would bend to the will of his mafia handlers and competing with the latter in the commission of aggravated extortion, to the detriment of freelancers who had carried out tasks on behalf of that economic-sports reality and who were forced, with the threat, to renounce, in whole or in part, their compensation. Finally, the investigation reconstructed the promise obtained by the politician of a hiring package in a company that deals with large-scale food distribution, in exchange for benefits at the offices of the municipality of Palermo and a sub-government position to be assigned to a representative of the same commercial company.