Confirmed the sentence on appeal for the comedian Beppe Grillo. The third criminal section of the Bari Court of Appeal condemned the founder of the 5 Star Movement for aggravated defamation against the former Bari MP Cinzia Capano. The reasons for the debate are the statements made by Grillo during an episode of the broadcast Anno Zero aired on June 9, 2011. Grillo was acquitted in the first instance.
In that broadcast, Grillo spoke of the absence of the Bari parliamentarian in the classroom on the occasion of the vote on the proposal to merge the referendum on public water with that of the vote for the administrative elections of May 2011, accusing Capano (and the other parliamentarians of the Democratic Party absent) in essence to have deliberately made the merger fail to boycott the popular consultation for the benefit of the water privatization lobbies. On the day of the vote, March 16, 2011, Capano explained that she was absent because she was rushed to hospital due to an illness. Hence the decision to denounce the Genoese comedian leader. Grillo was given the penalty of economic compensation for the damage to be defined in civil proceedings in addition to the payment of court costs.