Bologna, 23 June 2023 – He answered the questions of the investigating magistrate and rejected the accusations the entrepreneur and former Northern League MP Gianluca Piniarrested as part of the investigation by the Forlì prosecutor’s office and the Bologna DDA on a millionaire scam on masks in the early days of Covid. According to the indictment, a traffic of influences and exchanges of favors between Pini and the former dg of the Customs Agency and councilor of the Calabria Region are hidden behind it Marcellus Minenna.
“He explained that it was the Ausl Romagna that looked for him, through an official who is a childhood friend, to find masks that were nowhere to be found, and then he activated the buyers he knew thanks to his work as an entrepreneur. At that point a framework agreement was stipulated, and the documentation of the masks was ascertained by the Ausl itself, in fact the masks were used without problems. Only later, according to the prosecutor’s office, was it discovered that they were incongruous”, says the lawyer Carlo Nannini, lawyer of the former Northern League politicianat the end of the almost three hours of guarantee interrogation in the Ravenna prison.
The allegations against him are aggravated fraud, self-laundering, fraud in commerce and public supplies and two episodes of corruption. His lawyer asked the magistrate for his release or alternatively for house arrest, but the judge reserved himself. “The public prosecutor speaks of a ‘pactum sceleris’ between Pini and Minenna, but there is no ‘pactum sceleris’. Since at the time no one knew how it worked to get the masks, Pini only asked him for information on how to get the goods”, explains Nannini.
For the prosecutor’s office, however, the two would have made a profit on the pandemic, in its most dramatic moment. For the prosecution it was, in fact, a ‘pactum sceleris’, a agreement with exchange of favours: Pini had promised Minenna to accredit him within the League so that he would be considered a man of that party and promised him confirmation of his appointment as director of the Customs Agency following the change of government, which he actually obtained. Minenna, the magistrates argue, “accepted the promises in exchange for the enslavement of his public function”, in particular “to Pini’s requests on the occasion of the importation of goods” including, in fact, the masks at the center of the investigation which involves 34 people for a series of charges ranging from aggravated fraud to corruption.
It all started from an investigation by the Dda of Bologna into a shipment of cocaine transported on a truck from Belgium. Next Monday the former Northern League parliamentarian will also be heard by the investigating judge of Bologna in the context of the second line of investigation, linked to drug trafficking. “Obviously my client has no objections regarding drugs, but he is also accused of two episodes of corruption in this case – concludes Pini’s lawyer -. We will provide explanations on this too”.