"The investigations are underway with reference to various and complex investigative topics concerning, in general, the use of the funds disbursed, relations with the tax authorities, relations with employees, the subjects involved. The investigations come from news and communications received from a plurality of sources, of a public and private nature, and are
articulated through the due rigorous scrutiny and study of each news and communication".
This is what the Latina prosecutor's office clarifies in a note, on the investigation under investigation by Marie Therese Mukamitsindo, mother-in-law of the deputy of the Green and Left Alliance Aboubakar Soumahoro.
The investigation concerns the management of two cooperatives that deal with migrants in the province of Latina.
While waiting for the developments of a story to be clarified in which accusations and distrust are growing, the political backlash of the case arrives which has overwhelmed the parliamentarian champion of the farm workers, who suspended himself from the Verdi-SI group.
"I suspended myself because I firmly believe in the values of integrity - he himself explained -, but also out of respect and protection of the history that brings me here, which is not only mine but that of many thousands of people. This is why I came to this decision".
In an interview with Piazzapulita, Soumahoro then said he regretted the tearful video spread on social media.
"I would never make that video again, it was a weakness-he underlined-I would like to apologize to all the people who know me, Aboubakar, for those tears".
The decision to self-suspend the deputy was announced during the day by his party leaders: "With the utmost freedom, Aboubakar Soumahoro communicated to us the decision to suspend himself from the parliamentary group", wrote Bonelli, Fratoianni and Zanella in a note meeting: it is a choice that is respected, "although not due", they explained, saying they are "confident, considering what we have been told, that the matter can be clarified quickly and without any shadows".
The intention of the deputy of Ivorian origins would be to clarify and "respond point by point and on the merits of the journalistic disputes, reiterating his absolute extraneousness to the events".
However, the leadership of his party itself also ended up in the controversy, accused of not having carefully considered the choice of the parliamentarian in the last general elections, who entered Montecitorio with a combative air, wearing laborer's boots on 13 October, and now instead overwhelmed by investigations media.
The last of the shadows that have sprung up in these hours concerns the doubts of the director of Caritas of the Foggia municipality of San Severo, Andrea Pupilla, about a fundraiser for minors in which Soumahoro himself allegedly exposed himself.
The latter would have participated in the collection of 16 thousand euros to give gifts to the children of the San Severo ghetto, but - Pupilla explains to Striscia La Notizia - "there are no children in the Torretta Antonacci ghetto".
And hence the warning: "I don't know if Soumahoro 'used' the ghetto to create a career: I will limit myself to saying that one shouldn't use the poor, but serve the poor. And not exploit".
At the moment, however, it is the judicial investigation of Latina, which sees the parliamentarian's mother-in-law under investigation: for Marie Therese Mukamitsindo, the prosecutors hypothesize the crime of embezzlement and the file concerns the alleged irregularities in the management of two pro-migrant cooperatives of the Pontine province, Karibu and Consorzio Aid.
Under the lens of the Guardia di Finanza there would be alleged non-payments to employees and irregular contracts.
From rumors, six-figure figures are sprouting up that the cooperatives have received from state bodies, through calls for tenders or disbursements as early as 2020. As if that were not enough, heavy accusations are raining down from some former guests in the structures managed by the coops, who in interviews to the press they speak of "unacceptable living conditions".
Among these, the reports of about thirty workers of the coops that were collected in June by the Uiltucs of Latina.
The unions speak of wages lost to workers, or at least of late payments, and the co-ops have so far defended themselves by explaining that they too would be awaiting transfers from local authorities, which is why the pay slips would not have been issued.
At the moment, however, the storm over the laborers' parliamentarian seems to have just begun, even if for Soumahoro it is only "media mud" that does not concern him and "will not bury him".
