LOCRI. The former mayor of Riace Domenico “Mimmo” Lucano, from “undisputed dominus” of a criminal association “exploited the reception system for the benefit of his political image” and used “a large part” of the unused resources for projects for the reception and integration of migrants for the “realization of multiple investments” which “constituted a sure form of his personal enrichment on which he knew he could count at the end of his career”. The reasons for the sentence with which the Court of Locri, on 30 September last, sentenced Lucano to 13 years and 2 months of imprisonment for irregularities in the management of the Riace model are very hard.
Mimmo Lucano: “The Prefecture asked me to accept, if it is a criminal association, also condemn the State”
That model of integration that the same judge extending the reasons, the president of the Court Domenico Accurso, proves to have appreciated by acknowledging Lucano, that he had “realized the commendable inclusive project that resulted in the so-called Riace Model, envied and taken as an example by Worldwide”. But, the judge points out, the former mayor, “having realized that the amounts given by the state were more than sufficient, rather than returning what was paid, he had thought of privately reinvesting a large part of those resources”. And, Accurso continues, “it does not matter that the former mayor was found without a euro in his pocket, as he proudly boasted several times, because if one stopped to evaluate this condition of mere appearance, there would be a risk of reward his cunning, disguised as false innocence ». Words that provoked Lucan’s immediate reaction. “I didn’t expect compliments but neither did I expect the Court to convict me on the basis of things that were not true.” The former mayor is unable to find peace, no longer and not only for the sentence – double that requested by the prosecutor – but now also for the reasons. “It’s all very strange – he says – from the trial the economic interest is not deduced at all”.
Mimmo Lucano: “The Prefecture asked me to accept, if it is a criminal association, also condemn the State”
Lucano is heated up because «my image is muddied once again but I don’t want people to have doubts about me» and, in any case, he says he is certain to prove his innocence on appeal. The judge, explaining the failure to grant extenuating circumstances, the generic ones and those requested by the defense (for having acted for reasons of particular moral or social value, ed), he also affirms that from the trial it emerged that “the purpose for which he worked for over three years had nothing to do with safeguarding the interests of migrants, whose presence, however, he had to use astutely, as a kind of cover for his predatory actions , only when the contents of this investigation were made known ». Ultimately, the trial for the judge “revealed illegal and perverse mechanisms, based on greed and greed, which at a certain point began to manifest themselves in an overbearing way in those places and translated into forms of true and precisely the ‘boarding’ of the conspicuous funding that arrived “.
Just the other day, the former mayor, on the sidelines of a meeting in Campobasso, reiterated that “the welcome for me was a spontaneous fact, an impulse of the soul in front of people who have evident difficulties, a fact instinctive”. “The issue of immigration – he also said – will be unstoppable, people are fleeing wars, hunger and the strong injustices of the world“.