The legal case against Massimo Galli, the infectious disease specialist on the front lines during the Covid pandemic, ended with a full acquittal. Galli was accused in a strand of the investigation into alleged rigged competitive exams at the Faculty of Medicine at Milan State University.

This morning, the Court of Appeals cleared him and Agostino Riva, his former collaborator, of the remaining charge of forgery, based on a report that was found to contain an incorrect timetable. The judges, declaring that "the fact does not exist," overturned the one-year and four-month suspended sentence, with no mention, imposed in the first instance.

The Fourth Court of Appeal of Milan confirmed the first instance sentence where Galli and Riva were acquitted of the main crime, and cancelled the sentence handed down in the first instance only to the infectious disease specialist and which concerned a forgery .

"We are satisfied with the outcome of the trial, which recognized the professor's correctness," commented his defense attorney, Giacomo Gualtieri of the Bana law firm. "This proceeding should never have even begun. Today, justice has been served," stated Luca Troyer, Riva's lawyer. The Milan Public Prosecutor's Office had appealed, asking the lower court to overturn the ruling in which the Court, based on the Supreme Court's case law, had held that in this case neither the crime of disrupting the freedom of auctions nor abuse of office could be charged before the reform that repealed it.

In their appeal, the prosecutors requested that the conclusions they had formulated at the end of their closing argument be upheld, with which they had proposed a sentence of 1 year and 10 months for Galli and 6 months for Riva, holding them both also responsible for the crime of forgery of a public document. Today, however, the double acquittal arrived "because the fact does not exist."

(Unioneonline)

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