The dossier is one of the most confidential ones. Tracked in the maze of administrative and judicial bureaucracy. A real network of relationships, strong powers and business all consumed in the skies of Sardinia, which has always been a land of conquest for anyone who wanted to connect the island with the rest of the continent. High-altitude weaves, most often perceived, sometimes proven by nailing documents. Certainly the state airlines, Alitalia first and Ita later, have always tried, most of the time succeeding, to put the rich, indeed very rich, territorial continuity from and to Sardinia into their game bag.

War on continuity

They have always opposed it in every way, in the courts and parliamentary halls, in the ganglia of governments, of all colors, and even insinuating themselves into the maze of bureaucracy. A blatant and underground ostracism, bold and arrogant. In the last ten years of air connections from Sardinian airports with the rest of the country, Alitalia, the giant of flying debts, has put the beauty of over 400 million euros in its "holey" pockets, all of which have come out of the lavish safes of the Sardinian region . Public money which was added, without any reason, to the already exorbitant earnings from the tickets of the millions and millions of passengers in transit from the island to the continent and vice versa. None of the strong powers wanted a system capable of calming the great speculation that until 2002 had been consumed on the skies of Sardinia without any minimum barrier to the state monopoly. For airlines, Alitalia first, a monopoly transformed into a large slot machine was better for an island that had no other possibility to move than the plane or the ship. And it is no coincidence that in the sky and at sea there was the most serious brake on the development of Sardinia.

Hot dossier

For this reason, the dossier we have come into possession of is much more than administrative and judicial correspondence. Within it there are intertwining and relationships, kept secret and undeclared, precluded in the documents and probably omitted in the declarations connected to the contracts. The legal events of recent weeks on territorial continuity have, however, opened a deep crack within the Sardinian air system and beyond. Once verified, the dossiers have become explosive due to the objective and documentary evidence to which we have submitted them. The statement might seem strong, but the papers reinforce it: from 2017 to today, the Sardinian Region has entrusted the elaboration, economic and financial analyzes, procedures, community negotiations for territorial continuity to none other than lawyers and consultants economic before Alitalia and now Ita.

Names and surnames

This is revealed by the documents we have come into possession of, coming from various fronts, from the safes of the legal and consulting assignments of Alitalia and Ita, up to the direct negotiation contracts between the Sardinia Region and the same lawyers of the airlines of State. Names and surnames that can be found in the overlapping of roles: on the one hand legal and consultants of Alitalia and Ita and on the other extending the procedures and analyzes for the territorial continuity of Sardinia on behalf of the Region. It is not known whether the regional administration was aware of this overlapping of interests and tasks, certainly in all the acts in our hands there is no such declaration. In practice, law firms and consultants would have failed to declare that at the same time in which they wrote, on behalf of the Department of Transport, the rules, the analysis of costs and services for territorial continuity played in parallel the copious role of lawyers and consultants of the state airline.

Not an occasional fact

What emerges would not be an occasional fact, given that from 2017 to date there are several acts of assignment entrusted to direct negotiation stipulated by the Region with the same companies and the same professionals used before Alitalia and today the same Ita. These are law firms and consulting companies, which have always been hired by the Rome airline, whose pedigree is an international top legal.

Contract for robes

In a world increasingly entrusted to women and men in togas it is, to put it without incurring legal risks, rather singular that the air continuity of Sardinia has been "entrusted" to those who defended the national airline on the other side. Overlapping roles that cannot be evaded by feeble reasons according to which firms and consulting firms are made up of dozens of lawyers and analysts. Those assignments, both by the Region and by the airlines, were entrusted, in exchange for fees with many zeros, to the same legal representatives, as reported in the documents in which we have registered copies.

The conflict of interest

The obligation to notify the “potential” conflict of interest, governed by special rules, is a key element in this whole affair. The first question is decisive: the very powerful legal consultants, appointed by the regional administration in direct negotiation, at the time of signing the public contract, declared to the Region to play the role of lawyers for the same companies that would have participated directly in the tenders of ' contract for territorial continuity? This is a decisive passage of the story. It is clear that if they had made it known, complete with a sworn statement, it will be the Region that will have to explain the reason why it has actually entrusted the fate of the most important tender in Sardinia to lawyers and consultancy companies. of Alitalia and Ita. The risk taken by the administration would have been a bit like that of the farmer who entrusts the design and construction of the chicken coop to the fox.

The forensic code

Limiting ourselves only to the rules that regulate the forensic activity, if it had been the lawyers who had not declared the conflict of interest, there would certainly be the case of a potential violation of art. 24 of the lawyer's code which establishes: "The lawyer must refrain from providing professional activity when this may determine a conflict with the interests of the assisted party and the client or interfere with the performance of another, even non-professional, role". The provisions are clear and without subterfuge: "The conflict of interest exists even if the new mandate determines the violation of the secrecy of the information provided by another assisted party or client, knowledge of the affairs of one party may unfairly favor another assisted party or client, the fulfillment of a previous mandate limits the independence of the lawyer in carrying out the new appointment ".

The silence in the acts

And, finally, an obligation that is not reported in any way in the deliberative acts of the Region: "The lawyer must communicate to the assisted party and to the client the existence of circumstances preventing the performance of the requested activity". The assignments of the regional administration for the preparation of territorial air continuity are all subsequent to those that the lawyers and economic analysis companies had received from both Alitalia and Ita. Before signing the contract with the Region, therefore, they would have had to declare the assignments with the airlines. The dossier is an infinite well of parcels, of consultancy that all overlap with the territorial continuity and the direct interests of Alitalia and Ita in the tender. The judicial confrontation at the Tar of Sardinia between the Region and the airlines, Ita in particular, is the most evident epilogue of this case of potential conflict of interest. The names are high-sounding and the positions are opposed: on the one hand there are the "private" consultants of the Region who wrote the territorial continuity, on the other the same consultants appear, the same firms, which, however, at the TAR defend the companies aerial, deployed against the Region.

The legal saga

The decision of the Ita lawyers to renounce the suspension of the exclusion measure of the state airline (reported yesterday by our newspaper) could also be an attempt to put the "silencer" on a story with implications all yet to be revealed, with contracts, payments and signatures at the bottom that could shake high-altitude affairs over the head of the island. Tomorrow morning the Council Chamber meets in the TAR to examine the renunciations of Ita and Volotea. On the judges' table there will be names, surnames, positions and potential conflicts of interest on the territorial continuity of Sardinia. The same documents that we will publish in the next chapter of the endless legal saga on the skies of the Island.

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