‘Ndrangheta in Valle d’Aosta, Cassation cancels sentences with postponement and acquits former regional councilor

Aosta – The acquittal sentence against Marco Sorbara, former regional councilor of Valle d’Aosta, becomes definitive, while for the other four defendants in the same trial Geenna with ordinary rite on the ‘Ndrangheta in the Alpine region – Antonio Raso, Monica Carcea, Nicola Prettico and Alessandro Giachino – the second degree trial will have to be redone: the fifth criminal section of the Court of Cassation has in fact canceled the convictions against them, ordering the referral to a different section of the Court of Appeal of Turin.

The general prosecutor of the Cassation had asked for confirmation of the appeal sentence. On 19 July 2021, the second-level Turin judges had acquitted Sorbara “because the fact does not exist” of the charge of external competition in a mafia association (in the first instance, the court of Aosta had sentenced him to ten years) and had sentenced the other four defendants, inflicting: ten years’ imprisonment on the Aostan restaurateur Antonio Raso, eight years each on the former municipal councilor of Aosta Nicola Prettico and the former employee of the Saint-Vincent Casino Alessandro Giachino, all accused of mafia association, seven years on former municipal councilor of Saint-Pierre Monica Carcea (accused of external competition in a mafia association). The defendants had always denied the accusations, even during the trial. The defendants of the four convicts had challenged the second-instance sentence, but also the public prosecutor’s office of Turin, for the part relating to the acquittal of Sorbara and that of Antonio Raso on the sole charge of political-mafia electoral exchange aggravated with the Sorbara himself. The blitz, with 16 arrests, dates back to four years ago, at dawn on 23 January 2019, at the end of the investigations by the Carabinieri of the Operational Department of Aosta and the Ros of Turin which began a few years earlier and coordinated by the Piedmontese DDA. The hearing in the Cassation for the defendants who have been tried with the abbreviated procedure is scheduled for 20 April next. Until the second degree trial, Gehenna had been the first investigation to sanction the existence of a ‘Ndrangheta club in Valle d’Aosta with a sentence.