“We can perhaps say that Roberto Rosso was naive, naïve, superficial, negligent, but not that he is in collusion with the ‘Ndrangheta”. The defense of the lawyer Giorgio Piazzese, lawyer of Roberto Rosso, the former regional councilor accused for a vote of Mafia political exchange with elements of the ‘Ndrangheta in the elections of May 2019, began this morning, March 24th. “Rosso – said Piazzese – had the misfortune of encountering these subjects and the superficiality of involving them in the electoral campaign. But they are the ones who have looked for him and not vice versa ».
The prosecutor – pm Paolo Toso – has asked for a very harsh sentence for Rosso (11 years in prison) in recent weeks, but for the politician’s lawyer it has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he has accepted any promise to procure votes in his favour. Just as – added the lawyer – there is not the slightest proof that Rosso was aware of the mafia of Franco Viterbo and Onofrio Barcea (the two bosses who would have won him votes, ed). “Rosso never wanted to create the conditions to buy votes, but in so many years of honored politics he has always wanted and knew how to build electoral consensus in other ways.”
All parties have underestimated the gangs
Piazzese intended to specify how at the dawn of Minotauro’s arrests (the operation taken on June 8, 2011) Rosso was no longer vice president of the regional council (he was Roberto Cota), but undersecretary for agriculture of the Berlusconi government. He said this to reply to the prosecutor’s accusations on the absence of critical analysis of political parties (including the center-right) following those arrests and relations with pieces of politics that emerged in those investigations. “Everyone was not aware of it: the local police forces, civil society and politics did not understand it at the time. There was a lack of chain awareness. And why should he have understood Rosso and what is the proof of awareness of him? ” Piazzese asked.
Fratelli d’Italia also frequents mafia members
The harangue continued with a pure political note: «Brothers of Italy, that is the party that here is a civil party against Rosso in this process, has seen fit to appoint Fabrizio Bertot as provincial manager of the party. Bertot himself who is accompanied to the home of the foreman of Cuorgnè, Bruno Iaria, known in the interceptions by Bertot as a notorious criminal. Well – said the lawyer – Rosso does not address the most important ‘Ndrangheta families in Piedmont. It is Viterbo who takes Garcea with him and looks for Rosso ».