The prosecutor of the Court of Imperia, Lorenzo Fornace, has requested an acquittal "because the fact does not exist" for Claudio Scajola, mayor and president of the province of Imperia, who stood trial on charges of aiding and abetting businessman Antonio Maiolino, owner of a workshop in the city. The request came at the end of the closing argument before judge Francesca Di Naro. Also present in court was lawyer Elisabetta Busuito, defence counsel for the mayor.
Scajola was accused of having ordered the former commander of the Imperia municipal police, Aldo Bergaminelli, not to carry out an inspection on a plot of land in the Caramagna area, where the mechanic — who had been 'evicted' from his previous premises (for reasons related to the construction of a roundabout, ed.) — was attempting to open a new workshop on land that was not designated for construction. The prosecutor reconstructed the events starting from the assessment of alleged building and landscape violations attributed to the mechanic. The investigations had been initiated by the Imperia forestry carabinieri unit, based on a confidential source.
At previous hearings, Scajola had rejected the charges brought by the Prosecutor's Office: "Mr Antonio Maiolino, whom I have never met, is a mechanic in Imperia whose workshop was located in the area between Viale Matteotti and Via Trento, where work on the cycle path was set to begin," Claudio Scajola had said. "He was not 'favoured', quite the opposite. Since he had been penalised, I believed it was right that he should not be left to fend for himself. Some want to see this as aiding and abetting; I call it doing the job of mayor: putting your head and your heart into it."
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