The first confrontation between Gabriele Visco, son of the former minister Vincenzo, and the investigating judge of Rome who on 6 February last placed him and three other people under house arrest on charges, depending on the positions, of corruption and illicit influence trafficking.
The former Invitalia manager has, in fact, chosen to make use of the right not to answer the judge's questions during the interrogation.
Same choice made by another suspect, the entrepreneur with a past in AN, while the lawyer Luca Leone decided to face the confrontation with the investigating judge Maria Gaspari.
Visco jr, accompanied by his defender the lawyer Leo Mercurio, spent a few minutes in the judge's office formalizing his renunciation of the act.
In his comparisons, the investigating judge disputes that he is the facilitator, the "intermediary" with the members of the commissions to ensure that entrepreneurs obtain the tenders announced by Invitalia, the company from which he was fired in April last year.
From the work carried out by the Guardia di Finanza it emerges that the group, which also included the entrepreneur of Molise origins Claudio Favellato, had set up an illicit system which had a point of reference in Visco: a "system of widespread illicit relations" which had aimed, based on what emerges from a series of wiretaps present in documents, to obtain support from the Vatican for the renovation of ecclesiastical buildings.
On this last aspect, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, stated in recent days that "this is all about boasting".
In exchange for his interest, Visco, who would have obtained Favellato a contract worth over 4 million euros, asked for "pasta", or "money benefits", or improvements in his working position.
The order cites a conversation in which Visco jr talks about his situation in Invitalia.
"I'm having a bit of a tense moment there so if you can make two phone calls to someone who picks up the phone...call my administrator...look Gabriele is good...because otherwise if I can't take care of myself and I can't go and do what interests you."
The investigators also 'immortalized' a transfer of money, the result of "intermediation".
A "blue envelope" containing "an unspecified sum of money, which may have been intended to illicitly remunerate other people employed by Invitalia, probably for the successful award" of the tender, highlights the Guardia di Finanza in an information, delivered on 9 February 2023 from Favellato to Visco jr in a bar in the center of the capital.
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