Aosta prosecutor Pasquale
Longarini, arrested for graft, received gifts including dairy
products and a trip to Morocco as well as cash in exchange for
favouring a businessman friend who was also arrested, a
preliminary investigations judge said Tuesday.
She said Longarini acted in a "reckless and inopportune way"
and his relations to the business world were "a web that has to
be probed in depth".
The judge said dairy businessman Gerardo Cuomo, an accountant
by trade, was "dangerous" and a flight risk.
Police are probing Longarini's suspected links to other
businesspeople.
Lomngarini's attorney Claudio Soro on Tuesday did not comment
the arrest of his client the previous day on charges of
improperly inducing third parties to give or promise money or
other commodities in an investigation coordinated by Milan
prosecutors.
"We have no comment at this time", Soro said, adding that no
date has yet been scheduled for his client's questioning by
Milan prosecutors.
Longarini, who acted as the city's chief prosecutor, is
currently under house arrest.
Cuomo, a leading cheese producer in the Val d'Aosta region
around Aosta, has also been arrested as part of the probe.
According to investigators, Longarini provided confidential
information to Cuomo to help him solve judicial and
administrative problems in exchange for the promise of benefits.
Longarini was the prosecutor, together with colleague
Stefania Cugge, in the investigation that led a court of first
instance in 2004 to sentence Anna Maria Franzoni to 30 years in
jail for the murder of his three-year-old son Samuele, a
sentence that was cut to 16 years by an appeals court and
confirmed by the supreme Cassation Court.
Longarini's attorney also worked on the high-profile case as
the lawyer of Franzoni's neighbors in the Val d'Aosta town of
Congne.
The arrested prosecutor also coordinated investigations in
the early 1990s that led to the arrest of Val d'Aosta Governor
Augusto Rollandin on charges of vote-rigging and of illicitly
granting regional funding to public transport companies.
Northern League leader Matteo Salvini on Tuesday called for
early elections in Aosta and in the region, saying the arrest
unveiled a "rotten" scenario in Val D'Aosta.
Speaking at a press conference in front of the city's
central court to comment the arrest, the leader of the
anti-immigrant, anti-euro party said that "crime controls
entrepreneurial activities and politics" in the region.
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