This is not a coincidence. Last Wednesday, on the same day that the determination hearing of the Municipal Planning investigation was scheduled at the Court of Cassation, the Milan Prosecutor’s Office ordered the confiscation of another construction site, another building project accused of being started in violation of the law and having a “very significant impact on the building structure of the area”: eight floors will be built near the San Vittore prison in place of a two-story workshop.
By returning to kidnapping, the Prosecutor’s Office seems to be sending a clear message: we will continue on our path, no matter what.
Then, yesterday, came a shower of cold water, with an order of the Court of Cassation that definitively annulled the seven arrests that on July 31 marked a sudden escalation of the conflict: with these arrests, for the prosecutors led by Deputy Prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano, the crime to fight was no longer a series of individual building violations, but rather a stable System, regulated by the Dome, which in Milan would lead to the violation of “urban planning democracy”. In the prosecutor’s reconstruction, the key names are those mentioned in the hundreds of chats submitted in the documents: Manfredi Catella, CEO of giant Coima, councilor Giancarlo Tancredi, Mayor Beppe Sala, star writer Stefano Boeri: the last two people were not affected by the arrest request, are being widely investigated, but are repeatedly mentioned in the prosecutor’s file.
The Cupola Theorem was dismantled first by the Judicial Review and now by the Supreme Court: and yesterday Catella had a fine hand at doing the math, and wrote that “from July 16, the date of notification of the indictment, to November 12, the date of the hearing of the Supreme Court, in 120 days eleven judges have gradually entrenched at the highest level of the judiciary our alienation from what is being contested against us”. It seems difficult for the Prosecutor’s Office to force the issue, on charges of organic corruption carried out by the Milan junta, although in recent days, in the Palace of Justice, predicting the impending blow, it was said “accountability will be carried out in the end, the investigation into the Milan System is still ongoing”. What the Prosecutor’s Office definitely does not want to stop is in the investigation and confiscation of construction sites that are considered illegal, also thanks to the confirmation received from several sentences: but it has caused the anger of hundreds of families who have invested their savings to buy apartments that are now at risk of never being built, or being delayed for years. So far confiscations have almost only occurred in areas where work has not yet started, but through Papiniano the Prosecutor’s Office sent police to block cranes that had reached the first floor. Against the protests of the “Suspended Family Committee”, mayor Beppe Sala in recent months has added his concern over the paralysis of the city office, where the investigation is causing “real panic”, and over the damage caused by uncertainty in Milan’s economy.
The Municipal Government, with the then councilor Giancarlo Tancredi, through estimates compared to the previous year, in 2024 estimated the costs lost due to urban planning investigations at 100 million euros, which blocked around 150 major projects that had already started (some already completed).
The mayor’s concerns were followed by builders and
professionally, sometimes in a tone that the Prosecutor’s Office did not like, as when prosecutors were accused of using code “like a cudgel.” This ultimately encouraged prosecutors to move forward. Cassation or not.
