Acquitted for not having committed the crime, the Tempese merchant Cosimo Muzzu and his wife Francesca Puggioni were cleared of the charge of having applied usurious rates to loans granted to some entrepreneurs. The sentence is from the Court of Appeal of Sassari and overturns the decision of the Tempio Tribunal: the couple remained under investigation for almost 20 years and then on trial.

In addition to the six-year prison sentence, the first-instance trial had ordered the confiscation of assets for equivalent value. But the prosecutor, in the Tempio trial, had requested the acquittal of Muzzu and his wife. The Court of Appeal of Sassari excluded the crime and revoked the confiscation of assets for equivalent value, accepting the request of the defense (lawyers Pietro Diaz and Marco Salis).

The Muzzu family sent a note in the afternoon: « It took 18 years for justice to surrender to the evidence that in this trial the defendants were the real victims. This aspect was already highlighted in 2022 by the Public Prosecutor before the Tempio Pausania court, when, after a long and detailed prosecution, he had asked for the full acquittal of all the defendants because "the fact does not exist". So much so that the first-instance conviction had greatly surprised not only the defense, which had highlighted how the plaintiffs' statements were seriously contradictory, but also the Prosecutor's Office itself. The conviction today was completely overturned by the Court of Appeal, which finally recognized the total innocence of our family. This trial has caused all of us innumerable damages from a material and moral perspective that no one will ever be able to repair, not even an acquittal for which, however, we are deeply grateful to the judges of the Sassari Court of Appeal».

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