The access commission appointed by the Interior Ministry, which will have to verify the alleged existence of mafia infiltration and possibly dissolve the Bari city council, officially began its work today.
The three members, the president Claudio Sammartino, retired prefect;
Antonio Giannelli, vice prefect;
and Pio Giuseppe Stola, major of Scico, the central organized crime investigation service of the financial police, have their own office in the prefecture.
Here they began to read the voluminous DDA file containing the accusations which led to the arrest of 130 people in February, including city councilor Carmen Lorusso and her husband Giacomo Olivieri, former regional councillor, accused of voting for political-mafia exchange.
The municipal administration also produced a dossier of thousands of pages with all the anti-mafia activities of the municipality led by mayor Antonio Decaro.
The commission may request other documentation and hold hearings.
The three commissioners have three months, extendable to six, to make a report to be delivered to the prefect who, only at that point, will have to draw conclusions and formulate a proposal to the Minister of the Interior.
Any dissolution must be arranged by decree of the President of the Republic, on the proposal of the Minister of the Interior, following a resolution by the Council of Ministers within three months of the transmission of the report.
Such a measure would therefore affect the new city council, which will vote on 8 and 9 June.
Yesterday the commissioners met the mayor Decaro and the general director of the Municipality, Davide Pellegrino.
The task of the commission will be to verify - explains article 143 of the consolidated law on local authorities - the existence of "concrete, unambiguous and relevant elements on direct or indirect connections with organized crime of a mafia or similar type of administrators, or on forms of conditioning of the same, such as to determine an alteration in the process of forming the will of the elective and administrative bodies and to compromise the good performance or impartiality of the municipal and provincial administrations, as well as the regular functioning of the services now entrusted".
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