Ghost buses and cars, storm at the Giffoni Film Festival

It was June 9, 2022. The marketing communication manager of Giffoni Experiencethe independent body that organizes the Film Festivalan international event, sent an email to the owner of an automotive group that financially supported several editions of the event by providing the necessary vehicles. He asked him to proceed with the signing of the sponsorship agreement, «so that we at Giffoni have the time to organize the assignment to the company Left-handed that you have known». Except that the tender for the assignment of the handling and transport service for guests and jurors would only be announced on June 20th. And therefore, «if we exclude unlikely qualities of clairvoyance on the part of the manager, we can reasonably believe that the assignment to the Mancino company was a fact already acquired from the start and well-known in Gff circles».

accuses him

Words of Mauro Senatorethe deputy attorney general of Court of Auditors from the Campania who signed the five invitations to deduce served yesterday at the Giffoni Experience, to the president of its Board of Directors Pietro Rinaldito the managing director of the institution, the founder of the Festival Claudio Gubitosito the person responsible for the assignment of buses and cars, Vincenzo Barlettaand to the contact person of the Hospitality Office, Maria Pia Montuori. They are accused (but everything remains to be proven: there are 45 days to counterclaim) for various reasons of having brought to the coffers of the Stateprecisely of Region who made the contributions, a damage to the treasury from 468.908 euro.

The investigation

Right and left hand. Results of a long accounting investigation (started in 2019 from an anonymous complaint), delegated to the yellow flames of Economic-financial police unit of Naplesthrough which the General Prosecutor’s Office believes it has collected the evidence of «blatant and flagrant violations of the minimal and basic rules of managing a job order». The one aimed at entrusting the movement of jurors and transport in the years between 2016 and 2022. Negotiated procedures systematically contracted out, in defiance of any principle of rotation, to Left-handed Transport of Giffoni Valle Piana, despite, at the time of the facts, the company «did not have – it is the reconstruction of Senatore – neither a fleet of vehicles nor an adequate number of employees to manage the contracted service alone». Hence the numerous subcontracts, partly also to companies that participated in the tender. What has been ascertained in the first three years is sensational, especially in reference to vehicles.

The reconstruction

According to the reconstruction of the Accounting Prosecutor’s Office, Gubitosi procured sponsorship agreements with automotive groups, who provided them at no cost to Giffoni Experience, and Rinaldi signed them. Then, however, those cars were paid to Mancino who, at least for the first two of the contested editions, “did not provide even one”. The prosecutor uses a metaphor: «Basically the right hand (Gubitosi e Rinaldi) stipulated a free sponsorship contract for the cars of the event and the left hand (Gubitosi, Rinaldi, Barletta and the entire structure) simultaneously entrusted the same paid service to Mancino, who evidently received an enormous and illegitimate cost saving from the operation”. And in the end, with the declarations of regular execution of the technicians, who were not regular, according to the Attorney General’s Office, he obtained public money from the Campania Region.

+++THE COMPLETE ARTICLE IN TODAY’S EDITION OF THE PAPER NEWSPAPER+++