Giulia Ligresti: “As an innocent in my cell, prison is not an instrument of pressure”

Reforming justice, starting with referendums. Giulia Ligresti, daughter of the well-known builder Salvatore ‘compensation’ with 16 thousand euros for unjust detention in the Fonsai investigation in which she negotiated for crimes from which others were acquitted, has no doubts that on Sunday 12 June a “first step” can be taken for a “change” that the country “needs”, according to him. “I believe that the referendum questions – explains Giulia Ligresti to Adnkronos – are an important starting point for putting the issue of justice at the center of the political debate. I fear that the referendum will not reach a quorum, but I hope that Italy will start again to discuss in Parliament a justice reform that affects everyone and that requires structural interventions that go well beyond five cards on which to draw an X to choose between yes or no “. The story of the entrepreneur is emblematic: she was arrested in Turin on July 17, 2013 as vice president of Fonsai on August 2, she asked to negotiate. On August 28, she passed from prison to house arrest after an appraisal on her health conditions, on September 3 she obtained from the investigating judge to negotiate 2 years and 8 months, so on September 19 she returned free. Until October 19, 2018, she was arrested to serve the sentence negotiated in 2013, but in the meantime in Milan her brother Paolo and two of her managers had been acquitted for the non-existence of those crimes that cost her her sentence. A conflict of judges that led to the termination of the expiation of the sentence, the revision of the sentence and the acquittal on April 1, 2019 “because the fact does not exist”. Recently the Milan Court of Appeal recognized her fair reparation for the 16 days (from 17 July to 1 August 2013) in which it believes Giulia Ligresti was unjustly detained in custody, but denied her compensation for the days subsequent “because the plea bargain was considered an admission of guilt (however non-existent)”, he explains. “I was in prison as an innocent and forced to bargain to get out of that hell and I believe that the responsibility of the magistrates is one of the issues worthy of being dealt with seriously”, she emphasizes. “The question about pre-trial detention (the goal is to maintain preventive detention only because of the danger of escape or pollution of evidence) is certainly what I hear most: the use of prison as an instrument of pressure, as my case demonstrates, must It is a question of the freedom of a person, of a subject that can touch everyone closely, and I want to live in this beautiful country of ours feeling protected “, concludes Giulia Ligresti.