The Court of Bari sentenced Domenico De Pasquale (aka Mingo) and Corinna Martino (sole director of Mec Produzioni Srl of which her husband Mingo was a partner) to 1 year and 2 months of imprisonment for the crimes of fraud, forgery and defamation.
According to the accusatory hypothesis, Mingo, a former Bari correspondent for Striscia la Notizia, allegedly cheated Mediaset with the complicity of his wife by making himself pay for some services relating to invented facts but passed off as true, and also having undue costs reimbursed for appearances and actors.
The defendants were held responsible for four scams relating to as many false services made for the satirical news broadcast between 2012 and 2013. For another three episodes, the statute of limitations was declared, as for the alleged crime simulations, and for three other scams and a complaint of slander, the Court acquitted the defendants on the merits "because the fact does not exist".
Mingo was also convicted of defaming the authors of Striscia la Notizia in 2015, accusing them of being the "creators of false reports".
The defendants will have to pay damages to the civil parties, Mediaset, Antonio Ricci and nine other authors and producers of the broadcast.
Furthermore, for four people, the Court ordered the transmission of the minutes of the statements made during the trial to the Public Prosecutor's Office to proceed against them for perjury.
"Documents have been produced in support of the defensive thesis that it is imagined to have been evaluated by the judge to reach the absolute results of the device. In this regard, our clients underline that they have demonstrated their extraneousness to the facts ascribed to them, reaching the acquittal formula for the most serious facts ".
The lawyers Francesco Maria Colonna Venisti and Ludovica Lorusso, defenders of Domenico De Pasquale (aka Mingo) and Corinna Martino (sole director of Mec Produzioni Srl of which her husband Mingo was a partner), declared this in a note, convicted today by the Court of Bari the penalty of 14 months of imprisonment for the crimes of fraud, forgery and defamation with reference to false reports for the satirical news 'Strip the news', and acquitted of other episodes of fraud and an accusation of slander.
"The sentences - say the lawyers - are not discussed: if they are not shared, they are challenged. To do so, it is necessary to wait to study the reasons that support the provision. This defense did not want and does not want the trial to be carried out in places that are not deputies ".