The "scare" in Milan. Politicians, former politicians, and businessmen all stunned and terrified: "What if they investigate me too?"

Milan . Hands or silence on the city? Even the French Terror was being prepared in July. Councilors and businessmen are afraid, councilors' collaborators and businessmen's secretaries are afraid, "to keep quiet and not declare," professors at the Polytechnic are afraid because, they say at Palazzo Marino, "look, twenty of them are under investigation." Ance, the national, regional, and the building contractors' association, are silent. A former councilor anticipates on the phone: "You are talking to a possible suspect." Emilio Isgrò, the artist, the poet, the great father of erasure, confirms, "that yes, it's true, everyone in Milan is afraid and even I can't say anything. I can only say that right now I don't see the so-called bastard who is needed to expose this great scandal." A prominent figure in the city answers the phone, but warns, "that it's not appropriate to mention my name. You know, these days." He says that "the gods are thirsty," the gods, and that Beppe Sala used a "very dangerous" phrase. It was June, the Radio Popolare festival, and the president of the Landscape Commission, Marinoni, was already under investigation, having been described by prosecutors as an "unscrupulous wheeler-dealer," but Sala says "it remains to be seen whether they're right." He was referring to the magistrates. These days?

Justice Minister Nordio , after the approval of the separation of careers, said that "woe betide the investigative information if it hinted at resignations, otherwise we'd be putting ourselves in the hands of the judiciary." Milan, however, has lost its tongue. A city fears ending up in one of the investigations' strands because "now we're trawling, no one is immune." Gentlemen of both the right and the left are speaking of the investigation, which has transformed Sala, like Covid, spread by a sneeze. They fear ending up "in the files" are the thirty entrepreneurs, thirty others, who were building in Milan and are now waiting: "Maybe I'm one of them." They've read the agencies and discovered that the prosecutors, during their inspections of the City Hall, have seized "the plans for thirty projects," thirty construction sites that could be halted, "and you understand that if we don't build now, who will repay the loans? And what about interest rates? They're advantageous today, but in five years, when will it all end?" They apologize, politely, they apologize to journalists, to old friends: "But we can't talk, at least until the investigating judge has ruled. You know, these days..." City officials remind us that for seven long years, seven, "the head of Anti-Corruption was Gherardo Colombo, the magistrate who was part of the Clean Hands team, a name that is proof of cleanliness. Do you think if there had been a sack, the 'hands on the city,' on Milan, Colombo wouldn't have reported him?" Mayor Sala, who has temporarily handed over the Urban Planning responsibilities to his deputy, Anna Scavuzzo, is tempted to ask Colombo to replace Tancredi if only he weren't afraid of a refusal like that of Franco Gabrielli, the former police chief who, and the Democratic Party says so, "has already said no." In other times, an urban planner would have been considered, but now Sala too is looking for someone who can communicate with the prosecutors, who can "negotiate." That's important. These days. Milan's former urban planning councilors are silent, as is Carlo Masseroli, the father of the PGT (Territorial Planning Scheme), the engineer and former urban planning councilor in the Moratti administration who in 2009 rightly boasted of having brought order to Milan, delivering a framework of rules, a framework document that "retires the old master plan." Pierfrancesco Majorino of the Democratic Party had already attacked him "for the barbaric use of public spaces," and Masseroli replied that "we want to offer everyone the opportunity to live or return to live in Milan." Masseroli is also in the chats because Marinoni "has reportedly started negotiations with Masseroli," who is now a manager at Nhood, a real estate company. Masseroli has changed jobs, as has Ada Lucia De Cesaris, Pisapia's former deputy mayor, another former urban planning councilor, who is under investigation for "attempted extortion," and who had "very close ties" with former councilor Tancredi and therefore "deserving of further investigation." Former mayor Giuliano Pisapia, son of Gian Domenico, who for a long time in the 20th century held the chair of Criminal Procedure at the University of Milan, has remained silent, a silence he had been cultivating even before the investigation. Regina De Albertis, the former president of Assimpredil Ance, who concluded her term at the end of June, has not spoken. The president, the first woman, had asked the municipality to expedite the procedures, to act "quickly, quickly." Ance, for a consultancy, has also ended up in the same water tank as the other investigation, the one that led to the arrest of Giovanni Oggioni, vice president of the Milan Landscape Commission. The building workers, the Order of Architects, complained that "everything was at a standstill" in Milan, and some even proposed the solution: "If necessary, we'll pay for municipal officials' overtime." The former president of the Milan architects' association, Paolo Mazzoleni, complained, having gone to work as the councilor for urban planning in Turin. He's been investigated four times, always in Milan, and the Five Star Movement is now asking Mayor Stefano Lo Russo, of the Democratic Party, to fire him. They've all been through Milan, everyone, because isn't it true that anyone with even a modicum of quality in the design field works in Milan? Then there's the other city. Rome. Politics. Sandra Zampa, the Democratic Party senator who protested the Five Star Movement's fury, the fury against Sala, says, "I'll always defend the magistrates, but I can now find wiretaps the color of underwear. Can I really say I'm tired of the lives destroyed by investigations?" In the Marche region, the Democratic Party's candidate, former mayor Matteo Ricci, is now under investigation. No one knows how long Sala will last, perhaps not even Sala himself. Claudio Lotito, the president of Lazio, a Forza Italia senator, doesn't know, the Emperor Hadrian, the philosopher who berates the times, this policy circumvented by municipal officials ("who, listen to me, have the real power") because in Italy, he tells Il Foglio, the only model that works isn't Milan but the "open door, close door" model: "Italians? Fifty percent are lazy, twenty percent are struggling to hold on, and thirty percent live by the 'open door to those who bring and close door to those who don't' method. What are you bringing?"

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