Lara Comi (Forza Italia) arrested in the "Mensa dei povente" survey

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House arrest for bribes for Lara Comi. In the ordinance, the magistrate writes that the former MEP of Forza Italia "despite his young age" showed "in fact an uncommon experience in having recourse to the various, tested criminal schemes aimed at providing a legal appearance to the payment of bribes, to the fraudulent removal of public resources and forfeiture of illicit financing ". The Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Gdf in Milan, with colleagues from Busto Arsizio, also arrested the CEO of the Tigros supermarkets Paolo Orrigoni, both under house arrest, and the director of Afol Metropolitana Giuseppe Zingale (in prison). In a vein of the ‘Mensa dei Poveri’ survey, the order was signed by the investigating magistrate Raffaella Mascarino and requested by the prosecutors Silvia Bonardi, Luigi Furno and Adriano Scudieri for accusations, in various ways, of corruption, illegal financing and fraud.

"MENSE DEI POVERI": The operation is a new trend in the maxi investigation which on May 7 led to 43 precautionary measures executed, among others, against the former Forza Italia coordinator in Varese Nino Caianiello, the 'blue' councilor Fabio Altitonante and the then candidate for the European Championships and city councilor at high altitude FI Pietro Tatarella. It was precisely the declarations made at the pm of Caianiello, the alleged "puppeteer" of the system and questioned many times in recent months, to confirm an accusatory picture already emerged from the first stories of entrepreneurs and suspects in the Prosecutor's office after the blitz.

THREE EPISODES FOR LARA COMI. From the examination of the circumstantial elements, writes the gip Mascarino, "the peculiar ability emerges that the suspect Comi has shown to have acquired in making the most of her network of knowledge in order to draw" from the public role "of which she was invested for expression of the popular will, the maximum advantage in economic terms and in terms of widening one's sphere of visibility ".

Lara Comi is responsible for three events. The first concerns two consultancy contracts received by his company, Premium Consulting Srl, based in Pietra Ligure (Savona), by Afol and, in particular, by the dg Zingale, “on the promise of relegation of a share to them Caianiello e Zingale ”, as reported in the documents deposited in the main tranche. Circumstances set by Maria Teresa Bergamaschi, lawyer and close collaborator of the former MEP in an interrogation on May 14: "On December 15, 2018 I received a message from Lara Comi (…) she wrote to me 'Zingale will want a Christmas present ' ". And he added: "He told me about the need to pay Zingale a sum of € 10,000 for the extension of the assignment". The exponent of FI is also accused of having received an illegal loan of 31 thousand euros from the Brescia industrial owner of the Omr holding and president of Confindustria Lombardia, Marco Bonometti. The payment would have been made in view of the last European elections and for a consultancy based on a thesis downloadable from the web entitled "Made in Italy: a brand to be valued and internationalized to increase the competitiveness of small coffee roasting companies" . In the third episode (aggravated fraud in the European Parliament) journalist Andrea Aliverti is also involved, who collaborated with Comi as press officer, for a fee of one thousand euros a month, reimbursed by the European Parliament. Asked by the prosecutors, he said he had received an increase of three thousand euros, with the obligation to return two thousand to FI to pay the expenses of the site that Comi did not pay. Finally, the entrepreneur Pietro Tonetti spoke of Di Orrigoni, a former candidate for mayor of Varese. He said that, in agreement with him, Orrigoni would have paid the advance of 50 thousand euros of the alleged bribe, disguised as an engineering firm, to obtain the variant of intended use of a land in Gallarate on which open a new Tigros store.