For those who ended up under investigation, it was eight years and eight months of ordeal, swept away by the judges of the Court of Cagliari: "The fact does not exist". The case of renting the offices of Sardegna IT ends with nine acquittals. In the courtroom all the accusations against the sole administrator of Sardegna IT, Marcello Barone, the entrepreneur Sergio Zuncheddu (publisher of the L'Unione Sarda group), Alessio Cusenza (of the tender office of Sardegna IT), Franco Magi ( president of Sardegna IT), Carlo Ignazio Fantola (vice president of the L'Unione Sarda group). Also acquitted were Bruno Bacchiddu (vice-president of ImmobiliarEuropea), Emilio Balletto (member of the evaluation commission), Natale Ditel (member of the Board of Directors of Sardegna It) and the former city councilor Giampaolo Marchi, president of the awarding commission.

The story

In the procedure that had led Sardegna IT to choose to rent the premises in Piazza Unione Sarda, there was no disturbed freedom of enchantments or abuse of office. The one adopted by the in-house company of the Region had not been a public tender, but a market research, which ended with the stipulation of the rental contracts after a comparison of various offers. This was clarified yesterday afternoon by the judges of the first criminal section of the Court who acquitted, with the broadest possible formula, all nine defendants involved in the investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office, born after the transfer of the IT company to the new district of Santa Gilla.

The fact does not exist

At the end of a five-year trial, the panel chaired by Judge Tiziana Marogna (with Elisabetta Patrito and Luca Melis on the side) took just a quarter of an hour in the council chamber to sweep away the shadows raised by the Public Prosecutor's Office on the procedure adopted in 2012 from Sardegna IT to choose the premises to rent to move the offices. The investigations, on 14 March 2014, culminated with a deployment of forces from the Guardia di Finanza, about sixty soldiers who searched the headquarters of the Unione Sarda and Sardegna IT, as well as the private homes of some suspects. Yesterday afternoon, the public prosecutor Gaetano Porcu - who in recent months had asked for nine sentences of between 4 months and one year in prison - renewed his conviction in his reply that it had been a "competition". A hypothesis always strongly rejected by the defenders, according to whom not only had the procedure been very regular, but it had also obtained the green light in advance from Anac, the national anti-corruption authority. In the sentence the judges shared the thesis of the defense, acquitting everyone: "The fact does not exist".

"We had no doubts"

In the defense panel Daniele Speranzini, Giuseppe Macciotta and Giovanni Manca, lawyers of Zuncheddu and Fantola, Massimiliano Ravenna (Barone), Francesco Marongiu (Cusenza), Renato Figari (Magi), Guido Manca Bitti (Balletto and Ditel), Agostinangelo Marras (Bacchiddu ) and Roberto Sorcinelli (Brands). "It is a result about which we had no doubts since the start of the affair", commented the lawyer Speranzini, after the sentence. “We regret that the defendants and their families have been exposed to eight years of allegations and suspicions, results – as we knew from the beginning – unfounded. We must acknowledge the Court for having done a commendable work of analysis and in-depth analysis, which has made it possible to recognize the impeccable conduct, marked by the utmost seriousness, of my client, his collaborators and the entire corporate and business organisation".

Francesco Pinna

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