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Mayor arrested over ‘care home of horrors’

Thirteen people have been placed under house arrest in the southern Isernia province – including the local mayor – for allegedly abusing elderly people and psychiatric patients at a "care home of horrors".

Published: 8 October 2014 17:25 CEST

Mayor arrested over 'care home of horrors'

Thirteen have been arrested and 20 others are being investigated. Carabinieri photo: Shutterstock

The thirteen stand accused of beating, tying up and neglecting patients and elderly residents at the care home in Montaquila, dubbed the "clinic of horrors" by investigators.

The suspects include a doctor, nurses, health workers and the owner of the care home who is also the town's mayor, Francesco Rossi, Ansa reported on Wednesday.

The arrests were made at dawn by police from the southern towns of Naples, Bari, Foggia and Salerno.

Twenty others are also being investigated at the care home, which treats around 150 patients.

The alarm was raised by relatives of one of the patients at the care home, who noticed injuries on their body.

Police are expected to show a video showing the abuse at a press conference.

Quoted by Ansa, chief prosecutor of Isernia Paolo Albano said the patients were “confined in that structure like in a concentration camp”.

The prosecutor added that “males and females were made to wash in the same bathroom and dried with dirty sheets”.

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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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