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VENICE

Venice mayor refuses to step down after corruption probe

Venice's mayor said Friday he would not step down from his post, despite being among the targets of a vast corruption investigation that has embroiled city hall.

Published: 3 August 2024 07:28 CEST
Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro gestures as he addresses media in Rome
Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro gestures as he addresses media in Rome, on April 4, 2024. Brugnaro said Friday he would not step down as mayor despite calls for his resignation amid a corruption probe. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

Luigi Brugnaro, who has maintained his innocence since the wide-ranging scandal involving public tenders and land sales broke in July, addressed the city council during a special meeting Friday, as hundreds of people gathered outside city hall calling for his resignation.

“I consider myself completely innocent and I will prove this in all appropriate venues,” Brugnaro said, according to a copy of his speech provided to AFP.

“I am not resigning,” said the 62-year-old mayor. “I will go all the way. I will fight to demonstrate my honesty and integrity.”

Two weeks ago, Venice prosecutors announced an open investigation into the mayor, his chief of staff and 16 other individuals — including Brugnaro’s transport chief, Renato Boraso, and local contractor Fabrizio Ormenese, both of whom were arrested.

Seven individuals, including city hall officials, were placed under house arrest.

According to media reports, prosecutors suspect Boraso of taking bribes from local developers and businessmen in exchange for favours.

READ ALSO: Venice limits tourist groups to 25 people to reduce impact on city

The investigation targeting Brugnaro — who has been mayor since 2015 and is currently in his second term — involves negotiations over arrangements to sell a stretch of lagoon area to a Singapore businessman for 150 million euros.

News reports, citing prosecutors, said the arrangement called for Brugnaro and two aides to modify the zoning criteria, allowing more development in the area.

Brugnaro, a right-leaning wealthy businessman, bought the land for 5 million euros ($5.5 million) at public auction before he became mayor, its value later rising due to planned development projects.

News reports say investigators are looking at the blind trust created by Brugnaro to manage his assets, including the land, after he was elected.

Brugnaro is the head of the Umana holding company, which according to his personal website comprises 23 companies that in 2019 had a turnover of over 700 million euros.

 
 

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CRIME

DNA samples spur new questions in Italy’s ‘Monster of Florence’ cold case

Newly discovered DNA could shed light on one of Italy's most famous cold cases, finally revealing the 'Monster of Florence' serial killer who murdered young couples in the 1970s and 80s.

Published: 2 August 2024 11:00 CEST
DNA samples spur new questions in Italy's 'Monster of Florence' cold case

More than half a century since the first shocking murders sowed terror in Tuscany, doubt over the murderer or murderers continues to cloud the case, even though three different men have been convicted and sent to prison over the years for some of the 14 murders.

But some are still unaccounted for and many questions remain.

Now, a new scientific finding has given hope to some of the victims’ families, even though experts advise caution.

A prominent Italian doctor practising oncology and haematology in the United States, Lorenzo Iovino, recently studied earlier analyses of DNA samples from a .22 calibre Winchester bullet found in 2015 in a cushion belonging to Nadine Mauriot and Jean-Michel Kraveichvili, a French couple shot dead in their camping tent in 1985.

That same DNA was taken from similar bullets found after the September 1983 murder of two German university students, Horst Wilhelm Meyer and Jens-Uwe Rusch, who investigators believed were probably mistaken for a couple, and the murder of Italians Pia Rontini and Claudio Stefanacci in July 1984.

The DNA could prove to be “very important”, Daniele Piccione, a lawyer who chaired a parliamentary inquiry commission into an unsolved aspect of the case that ended in 2022, told AFP. 

READ ALSO: Italian families want ‘Monster of Florence’ serial killer case reopened

The ‘monster’ or ‘monsters’ of Florence terrorised the capital of Tuscany and its countryside between 1974 and 1985 by murdering 14 people, including six couples, most of whom were shot in their cars during or immediately following sexual intercourse.

Italy was then going through a bloody period of political violence dubbed the ‘Years of Lead’, in which the Red Brigades and armed groups of the extreme right caused thousands of deaths.

The murder weapon in the cold case – a Beretta semi-automatic pistol – has never been found.

The sprawling case was hindered by competition between two investigating authorities – Italy’s police and the Carabinieri force – as well as between prosecutors and judges.

Investigators followed multiple leads, from a Sardinian vendetta to the Italian secret services, from a sect to a conspiracy of notables.

Finally, a poor farmer portrayed as violent and sex-obsessed by prosecutors, Pietro Pacciani – already convicted of homicide in 1951 and imprisoned in 1987 for raping his two daughters – was sentenced to life in 1994.

Pacciani, who called himself “innocent as Christ on the cross”, was acquitted on appeal two years later, but he was awaiting retrial when he died in 1998 of a heart attack at the age of 73.

Two of Pacciani’s alleged accomplices, Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti, were also found guilty and sent behind bars. Both have since died.

Genetic comparisons

Lawyers for the civil parties in the case are now asking for the DNA identified by Iovino to be compared.

But with whose?

Vieri Adriani, a lawyer for the families of the French victims, wants the body of Italian victim Stefania Pettini, murdered in September 1974 with her boyfriend Pasquale Gentilcore, to be exhumed.

“We know, according to the medical examiner’s report, that she could have fought with the assassin, and it’s not impossible to imagine that there remained biological traces, under her fingernails, for example,” he told La Repubblica daily this week, confirming his comments to AFP.

Under the same logic, DNA could also be taken from Gentilcore’s clothing.

According to Iovino, the new DNA does not match that of the victims nor with anyone convicted over the decades.

For Roberto Taddeo, a former lawyer and author of a compendium on the Monster of Florence, the new DNA could be due to contamination by investigators, technicians or forensic scientists who worked on the case.

Taddeo recommended “the greatest caution”, warning against falling into judicial “revisionism”.

“Pacciani did not die innocent in the eyes of Italian law, he died before his new trial”, he told AFP.

A first murder sometimes attributed to the elusive killer or killers dates back to 1968, when a woman and her lover were murdered in a car.

The deceived husband was convicted. Years later, investigators discovered that the murder weapon was the famous Beretta from the Monster of Florence killings.

Did the weapon change hands? Did an innocent man pay for the guilty one?

The early double homicide remains one of the many mysteries of the case.

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