“There will be a commission” which will have to assess the possibility of dissolving the municipality due to mafia infiltration, he specifies. Antonio Decaro on RaiNews24, the mayor of Bari has been overwhelmed in recent hours by the media attention generated by the announcement by Interior Minister Piantedosi of the start of a verification procedure.
“I had this phone call while I was in the car with the escort,” said the mayor, emphasizing that he has been an institutional figure under protection for 9 years precisely because he openly fights organized crime . “The fight against the mafia is done with investigations and justice, but it is also done with the social antimafia, with the daily commitment of all of us, and also with days like these which show which side is the country,” he said during the event celebrating the Day of commemoration and commitment in memory of the victims of the mafia.
“It worried me that there were controversies and even photographs of parliamentarians from the other political party asking this thing from the Minister of the Interior, in a city where we have been fighting against organized crime for years,” said the mayor.
“The public prosecutor, on the day of the arrests, declared that it was a limited and detailed element and the municipal administration has always demonstrated that it carries out coercive actions against organized crime,” Decaro said.
Tears in the city council room
Yesterday there were tears at the end of his speech in the Bari City Council room. A room full of townspeople and citizens to listen to the mayor Antonio Decaro. Among them also those who actively participated, by endangering themselves and their loved ones, in the fight against “the 14 mafia clans” present in this territory.
“Today's tears were linked to the presence of people whom I helped free from the noose of usury and who, knowing about the press conference, voluntarily decided to come. They greeted me and cried with me, because these are the people I convinced to denounce.”
THEThe mayor spoke of “an act of war” which requires “self-defense” of “the city which has been fighting the mafia head-on for a long time”. There are only three months left before the vote for the renewal of the municipal administration and Decaro. believes that this is a move by the center right aimed at “polluting the electoral campaign and having the match canceled”. In Bari they have been in loss for 20 years – he said – and some of them, like Savastano in Gomorrah, say “let's take back the city”. But the city belongs to the inhabitants of Bari, it does not belong to anyone. »
The decision to send the commission was made by the Ministry of the Interior, at the instigation of center-right parliamentarians, after the arrests of February 26, the epilogue of the Internal Code investigation which revealed an alleged political-mafia exchange voting system during the 2019 municipal elections. municipal urban transport company, Amtab, was subject to judicial administration for a year. In addition, the Ministry of the Interior will send an inspection to the Prefecture of Bari following the case, revealed during an investigation, of the official who approached a suspect close to the clan to recover the car that had been stolen from him .
There are also among the 130 people who ended up in prison and under house arrest Carmen Lorussocouncilor elected with the center-right then passed to the majority of Decaro and her husband Giacomo Olivieriformer regional councilor.
“This government – replied the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi – declared war on the mafias and certainly not on local administrators. I understand the bitterness of the mayor of Bari” but “since he has been in power, our government has already dissolved 15 predominantly center-right municipalities”.
