(ANSA) - Rome, September 16 - Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli
said Wednesday that the system in which 5% of city contracts are
reserved for cooperatives must be changed in the light of the
Mafia Capitale case.
"The issue of 5% for the cooperatives, which some have
defined a hunting reserve, should be revised," he said.
"It started out of a good intention, but the way it has
been used is a crime gene and it produces the fragmentation of
contracts".
The Mafia Capitale probe, which erupted last year, concerns
allegations that a mafia organisation muscled in on city
contracts worth millions.
Many of the contracts under suspicion went to cooperatives.
Rome city government between 2011 and 2014 under the
administration of Gianni Alemanno and part of the administration
of current mayor Ignazio Marino was a "free port" for
procurement contracts, according to a front-page article in
Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Wednesday, based on a
report by Italy's anti-corruption authority ANAC.
The article said ANAC's analysis of city government
management in those years found that 43% of contracts for city
jobs and services, paid for with public funds, were awarded
through private negotiations without following official
procedure.
In the report, ANAC inspectors said the use of private
negotiations instead of public tenders was "generalized and
indiscriminate" and in "clear variance and contrast with the
rules, often revealing a nonchalant and sometimes even reckless
application or evasion of the regulations".
"This suggests that the practices revealed have their
origin in the distant past and represent in many cases more a
polished ploy that oriented the contractual work of the offices
towards a simplified route, a foretelling - as evidenced by
recent news reports - of distortions of a corrupt nature, rather
than from unusual conditions that characterised the political
and administrative work of the Rome city government in the last
few years," ANAC said.
Corriere della Sera said that hiding behind the
approximately three billion euros awarded through private
negotiations over four years, there was "more wrongdoing than a
solution to emergency situations, and the Mafia Capitale
investigation did nothing more than confirm this hypothesis".
The ANAC report, completed August 7, was sent to Rome Mayor
Ignazio Marino as well as Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli for
evaluation and action, as well as to the public prosecutor's
office (antimafia division), and the prosecutor of the Audit
Court for possible further investigations.
Marino recently made a point to distance his city council
from that of his predecessor Gianni Alemanno, based on a report
by Interior Minister Angelo Alfano on the Eternal City's
corruption scandal.
"This has clarified that the mafia infiltrations that
polluted the administration during Alemanno's council (leading
to the arrest of several of his collaborators and mafia
accusations against the ex mayor) met with a wall of
discontinuity with my city council," Marino said when Alfano's
report was released August 27.
Rome contract process under scrutiny for corruption
Anti-corruption authority report highlights discrepancies