Seventeen Convictions Requested in Naples for Mafia-Related Political Vote Trading

Seventeen convictions have been requested by the Naples Prosecutor's Office (District Anti-Mafia Directorate) for politicians and businessmen from Melito di Napoli arrested in April last year for mafia-related political vote trading, attacks on the political rights of citizens, mafia-type association, corruption, external competition in a mafia association, attempted extortion. Deputy prosecutor Giuliano Caputo, during the trial which takes place with the abbreviated procedure, specifically requested 10 years in prison for the former mayor Luciano Mottola, 39 years old, elected in 2021 at the head of a center-right coalition, 12 years for the former president of the Municipal Council Rocco Marrone, 12 years and four months for the 26-year-old former FdI councilor Antonio Cuozzo, 13 years for the entrepreneur Emilio Rostan, 9 years and four months for Vincenzo Marrone and eight years and two months for Marco Ascione; 20 years and eight months in prison were then requested for the 39-year-old Luigi Tutino and eleven years and six months for Luciano De Luca, both considered members of the Amato-Pagano clan. The defense team includes lawyers Mario Griffo, Umberto Del Basso De Caro, Luigi Senese, and Gandolfo Geraci. According to the DDA and the Naples Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, which conducted the investigations, the political life in Melito was under the yoke of the Amato Pagano clan, which would have influenced the elections of October 3 and 4, 2021. For the investigators, it would have been the entrepreneur Emilio Rostan to maintain relations with the clan to determine the election of Luciano Mottola; the members of the coalition supporting Mottola would also have accepted the promise of the Amato Pagano's capozona (Vincenzo Nappi, lured into a trap and killed in a restaurant, among customers, last January 23) to procure votes for the runoff: preferences extorted with pressures and intimidations, in exchange for money and even with the promise of jobs. The investigation began in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, after the complaint of the former mayor Antonio Amente, who later died in hospital precisely because of Covid. The investigation led last April 16 people to prison, including Mottola, Rocco Marrone, and Antonio Cuozzo, and two under house arrest; among these the former municipal councilor Massimiliano Grande, 51 years old, leader of the "Really Ecology & Rights", who negotiated a sentence of two years and six months. Precisely Grande, in an interception that concerns the votes for the metropolitan city of Naples on March 13, 2022, was heard saying: "they offered me two thousand euros... I personally before saying yes ... I said I make a pass by Emilio..."; where Emilio is Emilio Rostan, who would have given councilor Grande the two thousand euros mentioned in the interception to induce him to vote for the "Great Naples" List. The investigation led a few days ago - on March 13 - to the dissolution of the Municipality for Camorra infiltrations by the Ministry of the Interior; already in May 2023, however, a month after the arrests, the prefect of Naples dissolved the Municipal Council due to the resignation of 14 councilors out of 24.