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Italian man cleared of stealing aubergine, nine years on

An Italian man has finally been acquitted of stealing an aubergine nine years after first being charged, ending a legal wrangle over a piece of fruit worth pennies that cost taxpayers thousands.

Published: 27 March 2018 16:45 CEST

Italian man cleared of stealing aubergine, nine years on

After a long legal battle, an Italian man has been acquitted of stealing an aubergine. Photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP

The man, then aged 49, had the incriminating aubergine in his bucket when police caught him trying to escape through a privately owned field near Lecce, in the southern region of Puglia, in 2009.

While being taken away, he pleaded with the police that he had tried to steal the nightshade because he was unemployed and desperate to feed his child.

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However, the courts initially showed no mercy, sentencing him to five months in prison and ordering him to pay a €500 fine. That punishment was reduced on appeal to two months' jail and €120.

The man's legal counsel was still not satisfied and took the case to the Court of Cassation in Rome, Italy's highest appeals court, where the defendant was acquitted nearly a decade after he was first arrested.

The Court of Cassation criticized the lower courts in Lecce for not taking into account the extreme weakness of the prosecution's case given the man's financial situation.

La Repubblica newspaper quoted the ruling as saying that the man “was definitely acting to satisfy the hunger of his family… there are grounds for justification [of the theft]”.

The court also lamented the amount of public money spent on the case, with €7,000-8,000 going towards legal fees as the man was too poor to pay for his own defence, La Repubblica reported.

Italy's Liguria regional president arrested in corruption probe

Liguria President Giovanni Toti, a right-wing former MEP who was close to late prime minister Silvio Berlusconi but is no longer party aligned, was placed under house arrest, Genoa prosecutors said in a statement.

The 55-year-old is accused of having accepted 74,100 euros in funds for his election campaign between December 2021 and March 2023 from prominent local businessmen, Aldo Spinelli and his son Roberto Spinelli, in return for various favours.

These allegedly included seeking to privatise a public beach and speeding up the renewal for 30 years of the lease of a Genoa port terminal to a Spinelli family-controlled company, which was approved in December 2021.

A total of 10 people were targeted in the probe, also including Paolo Emilio Signorini, who stepped down last year as head of the Genoa Port Authority, one of the largest in Italy. He was being held in jail on Tuesday.

He is accused of having accepted from Aldo Spinelli benefits including cash, 22 stays in a luxury hotel in Monte Carlo – complete with casino chips, massages and beauty treatments – and luxury items including a 7,200-euro Cartier bracelet.

The ex-port boss, who went on to lead energy group Iren, was also promised a 300,000-euro-a-year job when his tenure expires, prosecutors said.

In return, Signorini was said to have granted Aldo Spinelli favours including also working to speed up the renewal of the family’s port concession.

The Spinellis are themselves accused of corruption, with Aldo – an ex-president of the Genoa and Livorno football clubs – placed under house arrest and his son Roberto temporarily banned from conducting business dealings.

In a separate strand of the investigation, Toti’s chief of staff, Matteo Cozzani, was placed under house arrest accused of “electoral corruption” which facilitated the activities of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra Mafia.

As regional coordinator during local elections in 2020, he was accused of promising jobs and public housing in return for the votes of at least 400 Sicilian residents of Genoa.

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