The Coima propertymaker presented himself in the morning before the Review Court, the PM Tiziana Siciliano explained: “We wait for the decision of the court within 10 days as required by the terms of the law”.
Manfredi Catellathe real estate of Coima Sgr arrested in the field of the investigation into Milanese urban planningshowed up this morning shortly after 9 am at the Milan Review Court. The patron of Coima, the “Mother” company of the vertical forest and more generally of the entire Porta Nuova area, remained in front of the judges for more than two hours, shortly after 12 the exit from the classroom together with the lawyer Francesco Mucciarelli. The decision regarding the restrictive measure will be taken “within 10 days as required in terms of the law”, as reported by the prosecutor of the urban investigation, Tiziana Siciliano.
Catella had ended up under house arrest on 31 July, when the investigating judge Mattia Fiorentini he had applied the precautionary measure for the propertymaker and five other suspects: the former councilor Giancarlo Tancredithe former president of the landscape commission Giuseppe Marinonithe manager Federico Pellathe architect Alessandro Scandurra and the entrepreneur Andrea Bezziccherithe latter unique among them to have been imprisoned. Subsequently, the review court replaced Marinoni, Tancredi and Pella the house arrest with the interdiction of a year from public offices, while Scandurra and Bezziccheri saw the restrictive measure canceled.
The man who transformed the Milan skyline is at the center of what public ministries call a “vast building speculation system” which would have conditioned decisions on the urban planning of the Municipality.
According to the accusation, which Catella and Scandurra, the latter in the quality of a public official member of the landscape commission, they would have tightened a corruption agreementaccording to which Coima entrusted to Scandurra about 138 thousand euros in design assignments, all subject to the assessments of the landscape commission, while The architect Scandurra did not correctly fulfill his evaluation function within the Commissionintervening in favor of Coima’s interests. According to the accusation, Scandurra should instead refrain for the existing conflict of interest.
According to the magistrates, another dispute was joined to this corrupt system, which also involves the archistar Stefano Boeri: the accusation of “undue induction” against the president of the landscape commission, Giovanni Marinoni. The hypothesis is that Catella and his designer Boeri, through the mediation of the then councilor for Urban Planning Tancredihave exerted pressure on Marinoni to obtain the approval of the “Pirellino” project, a hypothesis formulated by interceptions and chats endorsed among the characters involved.
The judge for the preliminary investigations Mattia Fiorentini had initially shared the reconstruction of the pressures, but had rejected the accusation of undue induction. According to the investigating judge, in fact, the legal element of the “advantage” that Marinoni should have obtained was missing From giving in to the pressures: the magistrate believed that Marinoni had simply immediately the pressures being “supine” against the municipal leaders, without obtaining a personal benefit.
However, the ministries appealed to the Review Court, claiming that Marinoni would instead have a concrete interest: to maintain good relations with the political world to “perpetuate the position of power” within the landscape commission. In support of this thesis, the prosecutors show that Marinoni was reconfirmed president of the Commission in December 2024, despite the fact that the previous month had already been investigated for conflict of interest.
The defense of Catella, entrusted to a pool of super-lawyers including Paola Severinorejects all the accusations by supporting the absence of serious indications against him. In the 18 -page defensive memory presented to the investigating judge, the CEO speaks of “errors and misunderstandings” of the prosecutors. During the interrogation he minimized the extent of the consultations, claiming that just 400 euros were invoiced in Marinoni in 2020, and defined the Pirellino operation “the greatest rip -off ever”, trying to reduce the strategic value of the contested intervention.
