Giovanni Jacobazzi's judicial odyssey: "Acquitted after 17 years, who will give them back to me?"

We receive and publish the letter received by Giovanni Jacobazzi regarding the judicial odyssey that involved him for 17 years and from which he emerged totally acquitted.

Dear Piero, 17 years after the facts, I have been acquitted in the criminal proceedings opened against me by the Parma prosecutor's office . I share the news with you, who were my first director, making me write when I was out of work. As you know, before becoming a professional I did something else. After having been a carabinieri officer, in 2008 I was appointed director of the security sector and commander of the municipal police by the then mayor of Parma Pietro Vignali. At dawn on June 24, 2011 I was arrested live on TV by the Guardia di Finanza. The Parma prosecutor's office accused me of having taken a bribe of 5,000 thousand euros out of an amount of 10 thousand for the construction of the lawn of the municipal police dog kennel. All the top officials of the Administration were arrested along with me, starting with the mayor. It was a large-scale raid. The investigation was called "Green Money", hypothesizing a whirlwind of "blunders" in the management of public contracts relating to the maintenance of greenery and public parks.

I spent 40 days in prison, 2 months under house arrest, and for another 2 months I was subjected to the obligation to remain at home. I returned completely free shortly before Christmas of that year. In the meantime, I had resigned and remained without a job, with the terrible accusation for a public official of being corrupt. For about four years I heard nothing more about this investigation. In 2015, when I had started writing for you at Garantista, I was notified of the notice of conclusion of the investigation. I returned to Parma to collect the documents and was speechless, discovering that I had been wiretapped for the whole of 2010: the financial police had placed bugs everywhere in my office, shadowing me, as they do with major criminals, for months. The cost of the wiretaps and the financial police's travel, the so-called "justice costs", was one million and two hundred thousand euros. Italian taxpayers' money that I would have had to pay in the event of a conviction. I asked to be questioned, even though the prosecutor had already made it known that he wanted to send me to trial. At the preliminary hearing I submitted to a very long interrogation, with documents in hand to demonstrate the correctness of my actions. Without any hope, given that all the statistics say that 98 percent of these hearings end with the referral to trial by the judge.

The trial ended with a sentence of three years and six months. I was not given the mitigating circumstances that are normally given to anyone. In the sentence, in November 2017, the charge of corruption was changed to attempted abuse of office . I believe I was the only citizen with such a conviction in the last decade. In practice, I had not taken bribes, but I had attempted to violate the rules on public procurement. Little satisfaction. Naturally, I appealed. The Court of Appeal of Bologna is a black hole and for the appeal to be set, despite having made several requests, I had to wait five years. When my time came, in 2023, the judges of Bologna, in declaring the statute of limitations for the crime, decided to send the case back to the first instance: if the charge had changed, from corruption to abuse of office (attempted), a new contestation and a new trial were needed. A few months ago, even though my attempted abuse of office had expired and Parliament had abolished the offence, Judge Maurizio Boselli , my “judge in Berlin”, wanted to get into the merits of the case anyway. Rereading the same documents that had led me to prison on charges of corruption and then led to a conviction for attempted abuse of office, he fully acquitted me.

On the sidelines of the criminal case, other things also happened. The investigation obviously led to the early fall of the Vignali administration and the administration of the municipality. The financiers who had conducted the investigation were rewarded and promoted for their brilliant operation against corruption. The new elections were won by the M5S and Federico Pizzarotti became the first grillino mayor of a large city shouting “honesty, honesty!”. Even the prosecutor who had conducted the investigation decided to run, but was defeated by Pizzarotti, with a center-left list and therefore with the parties that had been in opposition to the Vignali administration, which had fallen under the weight of his investigation. The prosecutor in charge of the file, however, was found to have a “conflict of interest” since her husband had presented his candidacy to take my place and she had not refrained from arresting me. There were several parliamentary questions on the point and an investigation against them that ended in nothing. In order to proceed against the PM, my colleagues in Ancona who had investigated her wrote, I would first have to be acquitted. Only in that way would there be proof that her investigation had been instrumental in getting me out of the way prematurely. The Attorney General's Office also opened a disciplinary file, but it all ended in a soap bubble.

Returning to “Green money”, in addition to myself, I would like to point out that in these years, in the various branches of the investigation, everyone has been acquitted. Except for those who, as unfortunately happens, can't stand it and decide to plea bargain, those who faced the trial have in fact seen their innocence recognized. Also for the record, the prosecutor then retired and the PM was promoted to chief prosecutor. Many tell me that I should do something. But I won't do anything. No one can give me back the years spent in this infernal whirlpool. However, I would be happy to tell the Minister of Justice what happened. I interviewed Carlo Nordio several times before he became Minister of Justice. I know his liberal and guarantor soul well. In these months, there has been discussion about the separation of careers but no one has addressed the central issue of the professionalism of the investigators. In my investigation there is the apotheosis of errors: from badly transcribed wiretaps, to incorrect inspections, to badly read management decisions.

Just one example: the famous bribe of 5,000 euros that would have allowed me to purchase a centuries-old olive tree to put in my house in Santa Marinella. The investigators were certain of this after having carried out one of their many tailings. Too bad, however, that in the file filed in court, the olive trees photographed were those of the neighbor's house! And finally, the timing: an investigation that brought down a democratically elected administration cannot remain suspended for decades. Citizens have the right to know whether the administrators they trusted at the ballot box are corrupt or not. The "justice system", dear Piero, is unreformable. No magistrate pays and will ever pay for his own mistakes. Those who follow the work of the CSM know well that the only ones who are brutally beaten are those who forgot to put a stamp or did not wear the toga in court. The only solution at the moment is to try to avoid contact with them as much as possible and to make the sign of the cross. This last piece of advice I feel like giving even to those who have no faith, praying to meet the “judge in Berlin” sooner or later.

Kindness

PS: I want to thank all those who have been close to me and who have never believed these accusations. In particular, President Antonio Leone and Senator Pierantonio Zanettin.

FROM

Web Editorial Team