On the Amara case “I must be honest, the story appears very murky and would have required the intervention of a very careful, independent and free judiciary to be able to shed light on a case that, I must say, has anomalous aspects”. To tell AdnKronos, speaking of the unsigned copies of the minutes of the lawyer Piero Amara that the Milan prosecutor Paolo Storari delivered to the then councilor of the CSM Piercamillo Davigo, is the mayor of Naples, and former prosecutor of Catanzaro, Luigi de Magistris. “What I find very anomalous in this affair is that a magistrate who investigates such serious and disturbing facts, then it is necessary to see if they are founded or not, goes to a councilor of the CSM and, as it would seem, gives him the material on which he is in An investigative activity was carried out. An anomalous behavior as regards Storari but also the recipient Davigo. Let’s talk about investigative secret. It is true that Davigo is a member of the CSM at that moment, but the first thing you need to understand is in what capacity he receives those Did you receive them with a formal transmission? In that case, I do not believe that the documents can be formally transferred to a single CSM councilor. If there are documents that must be transmitted for competence to the CSM, there is the formal channel transmission “. The story, however, leads de Magistris to reflect on a similarity, and on the differences in behavior, between the Storari case and what he did as deputy prosecutor of Catanzaro. “When I was faced with the fact of having to secret in the safe the registration of the then deputy and regional coordinator of Forza Italia Giancarlo Pittelli together with a general of the Guardia di Finanza, because I was investigating a covered lodge, deviated Freemasonry and other serious crimes – underlines de Magistris -, since I knew of Pittelli’s very close relationship with the public prosecutor and of his pervasive ability to become aware of the most confidential facts, I made a secret registration, put it in the safe and closed it. certainly anomalous procedure, certainly irregular. But I posed a problem: I have the elements that Pittelli is linked to the prosecutor, already reported to the Salerno prosecutor’s office on another previous big leak of news, if I had warned the prosecutor that I had to send him some acts, as required by law, I would have found myself facing some magistrate who surely would have investigated me for aiding or abetting of the investigative secrecy, accusing me of having informed the prosecutor despite knowing of the close, even collusive, relationship between a suspect and the prosecutor himself “. Instead, adds de Magistris, “I secretly thought that when the CSM called me, I would explain the reasons why a conduct otherwise chargeable to me was not attributable to me. Instead, what did CSM say to me? once he had to abstain. Basically he told me that I had to break the secret, help his contact man in the prosecutor’s office and burn the investigation. That’s why this story of Amara’s minutes struck me, because here there is even a magistrate who investigates, and should investigate with reasons of investigative secrecy, who goes to a CSM adviser unleashing everything we saw later, with the role of the secretary, the transmission of the minutes to journalists and everything we know about the newspapers. that’s why I say that this story struck me both in Storari’s transmission and in Davigo’s reception “. But, explains de Magistris, “here there is not only a possible profile of ethics, which is also important for those who hold a role in the body that should teach magistrates how to behave, but also a criminal issue. more delicate, therefore, is the secrecy of these minutes. I do not know if these papers then circulated further or if we are limited to gossip, but one of the two: either the facts reported are true, and it is a disturbing story, or , if they were false, we would be faced with a great operation of misdirection and slander. This is why I say that great professionalism and also very correct behavior would have been needed. As a prosecutor from Catanzaro I think I behaved in an exemplary manner, because I did everything in the sunlight, I secreted, locked in a safe, I stamped with the chancellery and wrote the reasons why I secreted, and they told me that I had to talk to the prosecutor, and instead of protecting the secrecy of the pro failure have protected the characters who had to be investigated “. So, adds de Magistris, “I protected the procedure thinking that when someone asked me why, one day, I had evidence to explain why I did it. Instead, in this affair, here’s what impressed me, instead to protect the secrecy of the proceedings and the investigations, the content was revealed. So why was it revealed? Maybe we are missing some steps … were there any particular reasons? It is still not clear what Davigo did, it seems that he received the cards, it is necessary to understand after having received them what he did, because if he has received and has made the formal steps of someone who receives something that he cannot receive, and therefore has acted by informing the competent judicial authorities, and then he does not risk anything. received and then give them to someone informally, he would risk being investigated. If that were the case, he would not be a witness. I give who it is. I hope so for him “. As for the name of the CSM Councilor Sebastiano Ardita contained in Amara’s minutes and indicated by the Sicilian lawyer as a member of the ‘Hungary’ lodge (a statement on which Ardita has already highlighted more than one contradiction), de Magistris he explains: “This is also why I say that the story seems turbid and disturbing to me, and that it did not deserve a dispersion of this type, because we are facing a burnt investigation with the possibility that decent people have been, in fact, burned . Maybe they also put people inside, but from everywhere we see it is a bad story to be managed in a delicate way, but at the moment we see that there was no professional ability to manage these investigations well from the beginning, otherwise we will not we would be verbal everywhere. This means that the investigation did not keep, as did the investigative secrecy, an authority was informed that did not need to be informed in those terms, the reports were leaked in the journalists’ concierge, we have a secretary of a former CSM Advisor under investigation and searched. The story seems serious to me, also because there are names that are perhaps more questionable, but also names of people who until a few days ago were considered among the people who were doing best in an action to renew the judiciary “. each case, adds de Magistris, “the main focus at this moment is on those who should explain their behaviors the most, namely Storari and Davigo.” Finally, De Magistris focuses on the consequences that the Amara case, and first Palamara affair, may have on the judiciary: “I believe that trust in the judiciary is today at an all-time low. Since I have followed it, but also going back to when my father was a magistrate, the judiciary has never been at such a low level of credibility, and this obviously also undermines the stability of cohesion on civil liberties and democracy. But how does it come out? I no longer believe in a self-reforming capacity on the system of currents. I believe that degeneration is now so pervasive that self-generation is no longer sufficient, so there is probably a need for an element of change, including a normative one. If 30 or 40 years ago, but also 10, I had asked myself the question about the moderate draw for the CSM, I would have said that I was absolutely against it. But due to the way it has fallen low, I believe there is a need for an element that places aspects that are not managed in a systemic way in identifying the people who hold positions within the CSM “. I believe, continues De Magistris,” that the the moment in which there is the possibility of accessing the plenum in a different way from the selection made by the currents, because that is a system of belonging that cannot be self-reformed. This is why I think we need a moderate draw, obviously not on 8 thousand magistrates drawn by lot, but a system that in the end provides for a moderate draw for a limited period of time, ten or twenty years, which allows a generational change. What I have seen in the current system and what I have seen of the level of corruption in the judiciary is something impressive. And this is worrying. It worries the citizen and the man of the institutions, because these are events that concern the stability of democracy “.