Today the grounds for the judgment of the Sixth Criminal Section of this Court were filed in proceedings no. 9604/2019 against Buzzi + 31, known as the "capital mafia" process.
The complex sentence retraced the stages of the process and examined the numerous grounds for appeal, establishing certain principles of law both in the matter of mafia association and in the matter of crimes against the public administration.
The Court ruled out the mafia character of the association contested with the accused and reaffirmed the existence, already considered in the first instance trial, of two distinct associations for simple crimes: one mainly devoted to extortion crimes, the other acting headed by Buzzi and Carminati, engaged in a continuous corruption activity against officials and politicians gravitating in the Roman municipal administration or in entities connected to it.
The Court, without denying at all that on the territory of the municipality of Rome there may be criminal mafia phenomena, as this Court has been able to affirm, explained that the evidentiary results led to deny the existence of an association for mafia-type criminal offenses: in fact, neither the use of the mafia method nor the existence of the consequent subjugation under the cover were highlighted and it was excluded that the association possessed its own and independent mafia criminal "fame".
What has been ascertained is a phenomenon of generalized, widespread and systemic collusion, the fulcrum of which was the criminal association that managed the interests of Buzzi's cooperatives through distribution mechanisms in the management of the contracts of the Municipality of Rome and the entities that this was a leader. This led to the devaluation of the public interest, sacrificed to logics of hoarding for the benefit of private individuals.
The overall picture shows a "system" seriously polluted, not by fear, but by the merchandise of the public function. A part of the municipal administration has actually "surrendered" to the interests of the criminal group that has found fertile ground to cultivate.
The facts also "tell" of entrepreneurs who have accepted a logic professed by Buzzi and his associates, based on the corrupt agreements between public officials and entrepreneurs, converging towards mutual economic benefits. In this way, free competition was limited and this occurred through forms of systematic corruption, not preceded by any intimidating mafia method.
In the end, the criminal responsibility of almost all the accused was confirmed for a series of serious crimes against the public administration, as well as for the participation in the criminal associations, reaffirming the previous merit decisions in these respects.
The annulment with referral to the Court of Appeal of Rome for some defendants was determined by the need for a new judgment on liability for crimes against the public administration, in most cases, however, by the need to carry out a restatement of the sentence following the exclusion of the mafia character of the two criminal associations.