The Finance Guard on Tuesday arrested six people and placed a total of 20 under investigation on suspicion of bid-rigging and other crimes in connection with a contract to restore Rome's city council assembly hall, among others.
The latest developments in an expanding case case fueled a big, lively demonstration outside city hall led my members of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, who called on Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino and his executive to quit.
The new suspects are charged with racketeering, aggravated fraud committed against the city of Rome, bid-tampering, issuing false invoices, and tax evasion aggravated by transnational transactions committed in Rome and Luxembourg. The corruption surrounding the contract to restore and refurbish the Giulio Cesare assembly hall allegedly involves an executive official at the Rome cultural superintendency and businessman Fabrizio Amore, whose name surfaced in the so-called Mafia Capitale probe into a crime syndicate that muscled in on city contracts and involved elected officials, businessmen and mobsters. Investigators say Amore was so certain he would win the bid that he began putting subcontractors on his payroll days before the winner was announced. Amore also used firms he owned through holding companies based in Luxembourg to lease two residential buildings in Rome's Ardeatina district to the city, which allegedly destined them to remedy the capital's notoriously chronic public housing shortage.
As it turns out, while the city paid Amore 2,250 euros a month for each apartment over the course of several years, not all of the units went to those in need - the entrepreneur kept some for personal use, investigators say.
As well, investigators discovered Amore dodged an estimated 11 million euros in taxes through a group of companies held in Luxembourg.
The newly restored Giulio Cesare assembly hall - which had been spruced up with touch screens for voting and other state-of-the-art technology to make the assembly's work easier - was inaugurated with great fanfare in September 2010 by then-mayor Gianni Alemanno.
The ex center-right mayor is among over 100 suspects under investigation in the Rome mafia case which sees former gangster and right-wing terrorist Massimo Carminati jailed as the alleged ringleader of a mafia-style organisation that muscled in on city contracts worth millions.
Last week, 44 people were arrested for alleged involvement in the plundering of public money destined for migrant reception centres. Also on Tuesday, Democratic Party (PD) official Marco Vincenzo resigned as Lazio regional party whip after press reports linked his name to the probe. "I resign as whip in the interests of the regional PD caucus, of the regional administration and of the PD," Vincenzo said.
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