Planet

Coldiretti Lombardy, president on trial for extortion

March 21, 2021

The acting president of Coldiretti Lombardia, Coldiretti Cremona and Consorzio Agrario di Cremona, Paolo Voltini, goes on trial for extortion. Under an abbreviated procedure, before the GIP (Judge for Preliminary Investigations) at the Court of Cremona, on 24.6.21. (1)

What is astonishing is not the news but the shameful omertà of news agencies and the mainstream media on an affair involving the management of Italy’s first region for agricultural production and third in Europe for milk production. (2)

Cremona Agricultural Consortium, the charge of extortion

Paolo Voltini is accused of‘extorting the resignation of two Consorzio Agrario employees, Paolo Ferrari and Ersilio Colombo, formalized on June 17, 2015 and July 1, 2015, respectively.’ Also charged along with Voltini is Tullo Soregaroli, Coldiretti personnel manager, who is accused of aggravated extortion in conspiracy.

The defendants sought and obtained an abbreviated trial, that is, an in camera trial with a reduction of the sentence by up to one-third in the event of conviction, based solely on the acts of investigation. ‘Unique clues‘ of guilt, according to the Brescia Review Court, which ‘appear to be fully corroborated by the other witnesses heard by the judicial authority’. (3)

The facts

The prosecution accuses Paolo Voltini of forcing the two Cremona Agricultural Consortium employees Ersilio Colombo and Paolo Ferrari to sign their resignations ‘under the threat of unspecified liability actions and to ruin their careers and any future employment if they refused, physically preventing them from leaving the room where they were summoned and from using their cell phones to contact their legal counsel‘.

Social stigma and harm

The forced dismissal with threats of the two employees in the aftermath of President Paolo Voltini’s seizure of power caused them a social and personal stigma for which they are now seeking damages in the amount of 1,127,000 euros for Paolo Ferrari, 350,000 euros Ersilio Colombo.

Judicial pinwheel

The precautionary interdictory measure of a 12-month ban on business activity applied to Voltini in May 2020 had been overturned by the review court just a month later.

A decision ‘respected but not shared‘ by Cremona prosecutor Roberto Pellicano, who had challenged it in the Supreme Court.

The Court of Cassation, in November 2020, had rejected the Cremona Prosecutor’s Office’s appeal against the review ruling, permanently putting Voltini back in charge of the Cremona Agricultural Consortium, regional and provincial Coldiretti. (3)

#CleanSpades

The big picture about the Coldiretti system is one that inevitably eludes prosecutors from time to time called upon to investigate episodes such as those described. Also due to indifference to equally serious phenomena, which also pertain to European public funding. (4)

It appears necessary, in the writer’s humble opinion, to scratch the crust. To check whether these episodes do not instead represent the application of a method, a military strategy in which – paradoxically – the regional president on duty is no more than an executor of orders from above. King or bishop?

Dario Dongo