Acquittal from the charge of criminal conspiracy with the formula “because the fact does not exist”. This is what the judges of the sixth section of the Supreme Court decided against the former president of Confindustria Sicilia, Antonello Montante and two other defendants in the investigation into alleged dossier activities. The supreme judges also dropped the charges for the crimes of revealing official secrecy and unauthorized access to a computer system, “in this last case limited to the conduct carried out up to June 2014” due to the statute of limitations. The judges therefore ordered a second appeal for the repetition of the sentence for illegal access carried out after 2014 and for corruption, cases for which criminal responsibility was also declared “irrevocable”.
“We are satisfied that the Court of Cassation has put an end to the hypothetical Montante system which never existed”. The lawyer Giuseppe Panepinto, lawyer of the former leader of Confindustria Sicilia Antonello Montantethus comments on the Supreme Court’s decision regarding his client. “The hypothesis of corruption against General Ardizzone has also been dropped – says Panepinto – while for the other hypotheses of corruption we will read what are the reasons that led the Court to confirm the charges and we will evaluate the judicial procedures to be continued although the Court annulled the sentences imposed for these charges, considering them inadequate. So much so that he annulled it with a postponement for the redetermination of the sentence.”
In the first appeal trial, in July 2022 before the judges of Caltanissetta, Montante saw his sentence reduced from 14 to 8 years. Along with him, the then head of Confindustria security, Diego Di Simone, was sentenced to 5 years, and the deputy commissioner Marco De Angelis to 3 years and 3 months. The word now passes to the magistrates of Caltanissetta who will have to analyze the decision of the stoats who have also made the acquittal definitive for Colonel Gianfranco Ardizzone, former provincial commander of the Caltanissetta Gdf. In the indictment of last October 2, the deputy general prosecutor, Elisabetta Ceniccola, had stated that “Montante is accused of having the top role of a group with a circle of interests, a ‘system’ that serves to keep all the participants afloat and Montante, for maintain his position, he needs the dossier activity”. According to the primary prosecution system, the entrepreneur, an anti-mafia champion who also held the position of head of legality at Confindustria, thanks to his contacts and the influence he exercised in some institutional environments, created a sort of espionage network: in exchange for favors, members of the police force would have given him information on investigations against him, straight on “enemies”, allowed him to have piles of dossiers on influential people. According to investigators, Montante would have been the head of a sort of “parallel government” in Sicily, and would have “directed” the political and administrative life of the island, placing his men in strategic places. In the request for arrest, the Nisseni prosecutors stated that “it has been established with sufficient clarity that Montante, in addition to promising and obtaining jobs, did his utmost to satisfy career expectations or transfers of office”. According to the prosecution, there were many in the entrepreneur’s court: leaders of the police force and the services, prefects, entrepreneurs, journalists, magistrates who turned to him for career advancement.
