In Pavia, where everything always seems to have a double version, the name of Mario Venditti has returned to heat the judicial papers and the news. The former deputy prosecutor, now under investigation for corruption in judicial documents, has become the symbol of a system that is crumbling under the weight of its own secrets. Around him, a team of men from the judicial police, accounts sifted through, figures that don’t add up and a flow of cash that has disappeared into thin air. In the background, the murder of Chiara Poggi and that archiving of Andrea Sempio in 2017 which today increasingly appears like the missing piece of a puzzle that no one wanted to put together.
According to the Guardia di Finanza, Venditti’s men spent more than they could afford. And not for momentary distractions, but for a real vice, that of gambling. Carabinieri Marshal Antonio Scoppetta, one of the most trusted on the team, spent almost forty-seven thousand euros on bets and lotteries in 2020, thanks to the lockdown and a loneliness that translates into compulsion. In other years it stops “only” at thirty or thirty-five thousand. And he’s not the only one. Even the head of the Pg section, Silvio Sapone, spent a thousand euros a month in his trusted Snai centre. Everything tracked. All incompatible with their salary.
For the Guardia di Finanza it is proof of a standard of living that is impossible to justify, for the Prosecutor’s Office of Brescia and Pavia it is a line to follow: because only money, in the end, can tell the truth.
The Pavia team and the “fixed” interceptions
It was February 2017 when the judicial police team led by Sapone and composed of Scoppetta and Giuseppe Spoto – the latter searched but not investigated – dealt with the wiretaps on Chiara Poggi’s friend, Andrea Sempio. It was Spoto himself who transcribed the recordings placed on the Sempio car. But in the version reported in the documents there is a discrepancy which today weighs as proof: “The Sempios talk about how to pay the lawyers”, he writes. The text, however, states: “We have to find the formula to pay those gentlemen there.” A seemingly minimal change, but enough to guide an investigation.
When the investigators ask him for explanations, Spoto replies that the rush is to blame. Haste desired precisely by Venditti, who “requested the transcriptions immediately in order to proceed with archiving”. From that moment, for the investigators, the coincidence between errors, speed and decisions becomes more than suspicious.
Venditti, meanwhile, was known for his passion for betting on horses. He had never made a secret of it, indeed he had admitted it with a certain pride: “I have always been a horse player. I met Venditti there, in 2010”, said those who frequented him. And when they asked him if he considered gambling a vice, he smiled: “Oh yes. So I have a vice too.” A smile that today returns in the minutes as an ironic shadow.
Sixty thousand euros and a whispered name: Maurizio
At the heart of the investigation, among wiretaps and seized documents, a mysterious name also emerges: “Maurizio”. No surname, just a whisper in the Sempio records. He is, perhaps, the man who was supposed to “act as an intermediary”, the one who Andrea’s parents name without ever really explaining his identity.
The dates coincide with the days in which 35 thousand euros in cash comes out of the family accounts, withdrawn in tranches of ten thousand to avoid tracing. Andrea’s mother, Daniela Ferrari, explains to the investigators that that money was needed “to get the cards”. The secret papers of the investigation, the ones that no one should have possessed. In fact, in the house, the Financial Police found a copy of the information from the Milan Investigative Unit, dated July 2020 and registered with the Prosecutor’s Office. Daniela deflects, but admits: “The lawyers asked us for sixty thousand euros. The Finance Department also certifies this.”
When they challenged the statement released to Le Iene, in which she stated that the lawyer Gian Luigi Tizzoni had passed confidential documents to Sempio’s defender, the woman recanted: “I told him a lie. I have never seen Tizzoni pass papers to my son.” But the sentence remains in the documents, as does that name, Maurizio, which continues to resurface in the minutes like a faceless ghost.
The “Gip archivia” pizzino and the network of favors
To make the picture even more opaque is a small piece of paper, seized during the searches: a note with the writing “20-30 euro Investigating judge archives”. For the defense, a domestic note on legal costs. For the investigators, an encrypted message. That “Gip archives” sounds like an overly confident prediction, a prediction that shakes the boundaries of coincidence.
The Prosecutor’s Office is also investigating Venditti’s relationships with the brothers Raffaele and Cristiano D’Arena, entrepreneurs from Pavia who managed the starred restaurant “Da Lino”, a usual meeting place between the prosecutor and the men of his team. The companies attributable to them, CR Service and Esitel, had the exclusivity of interception and car rental services for the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office. Both prosecutors – Venditti and Pietro Paolo Mazza – are accused of alleged benefits for a total of approximately 750 thousand euros.
A mix of relationships and conveniences that today brings out a deeper doubt: how lax the boundary between friendship, interest and justice has become within that Pavia system which for years has managed silences, evidence and archiving.
The footprint that reopens Chiara Poggi’s crime
While the economic investigation continues, another lead returns to make history tremble: the new report on footprint number 42 found at the crime scene. According to experts, that dot blood trace does not belong to a shoe by Alberto Stasi, but could be compatible with a Frau model, now out of production, worn by those who wear a size 44. Andrea Sempio, for example.
A tiny detail, yet capable of reopening an entire legal case. It is on the basis of that new analysis that the Supreme Court authorized the reopening of the Sempio file last year. And from there, like a domino effect, we arrived at the rest: the modified wiretaps, the out-of-scale expenses, the missing cash, the classified papers, the mysterious Maurizio.
A man alone before the Review
Tomorrow, Mario Venditti will appear before the Court of Review to oppose the seizure of his IT devices. His lawyer, Domenico Aiello, speaks of an investigation “of justice against justice”, a machine that risks destroying even those who may appear innocent. According to Aiello, his client has already handed over the passwords to the devices, but has refused an indiscriminate inspection: “You cannot delve into the private life of a magistrate without limits and without concrete evidence.”
Yet, the case no longer concerns him alone. What emerges from the investigation is the portrait of a system that has blurred the boundaries between justice and privilege, between duty and passion, between play and power. Venditti’s men, with their bets and their debts, become the symbol of a deeper drift: a mechanism that has revolved for years over the tragedy of a twenty-three-year-old girl killed in a provincial house and who today finds herself dealing with her own moral cracks.
In Garlasco’s labyrinth, everything still revolves around the same question, the simplest and the most impossible: who really archived the truth?
