TOLMEZZO. There was a market crisis that was affecting all sectors of the economy and there was no regional commercial plan capable of countering competition from multinationals. Unlikely, then, for a cooperative that moves across the territory with actions of a mutualistic nature, to survive the impact of the negative economic situation.
It is again from the circumstances of time and place in which the disputed facts took place that the defense of the trial for the crash of CoopCa has chosen to leave, to ask for the acquittal of all the accused.
It fell to the lawyer Massimo Cescutti, who assists the then chairman of the Board of Directors, Giacomo Cortiula, now 86, from Socchieve, to fight to avoid the highest sentence (4 years and 9 months) among those formulated by the prosecutor Elisa Calligaris. “The 30 hearings – he said – made it clear that none of the former directors stole a single cent”.
Upstream, he recalled, the rush to reimburse the shares triggered by the articles on the Trieste Coop and the climate of tension that followed.
“It is easy to accuse someone in retrospect of having made a mistake”, he observed, taking as an example the case of the most famous Italian car company which, recommended by leading economists, diversified its investments to face the oil crisis, with a choice that led it to decline.
“It was not an error dictated by incompetence or lack of foresight – he said -, but by the cognitive data available at the time”. As for the story of his client, the lawyer recalled the threats that were addressed to him when, not having been immediately entered in the register of suspects, he was suspected, and the personal ordeal, which culminated in the recent death of his wife Rachele, ” in turn worn out by the stress caused by the judicial investigation ».
No less heavy was the sentence requested for the former mayor Fosca Petris, 59, of Tolmezzo (4 years and 6 months), defended by the lawyer Maurizio Conti, who focused on each of the operations that would have contributed to the bankruptcy, to start with the spin-off for the establishment of ImmobilCoopca, highlighting its “perfect regularity” and recalling how in the trial of the Trieste Coop, which can be overlapped in terms of the contractual structure of real estate transactions, all have been acquitted because the fact does not exist.
The lawyer then observed how the “emergence of latent capital gains could have been achieved with multiple instruments: a revaluation for tax purposes, the transition to international accounting standards, or, based on a circular from Bank of Italy, taking as reference the declared value for the purposes of the IMU “.
The lawyer Federico Carnelutti, defender of the councilors Sonia Cacitti and Vanessa Gressani, 50, from Tolmezzo, also spoke of the “difficult market context” and the “rush to refund”, to highlight how not insolvency should be discussed, but rather ” a crisis faced by all means “and in which it was those factors that” prevented the last recovery plan from being implemented “.
Given that the councilors “acted on the information they received”, the defense asked “how they could recognize an insolvency that not even internal and external bodies had detected”. Audience in September for the last defenses. –