Milano, arrests in ATM for rigged contracts on the Green line
Twelve people in prison and one under house arrest in the Guardia di Finanza operation Milano by delegation of the Public Prosecutor's Office called Subway.
Corruption, auction rigging, abuse of office and forgery of public documents are the crimes accused of several unfaithful managers and officials of the Transport Company. Among these, the investigation that uncovered a system of cheating on public procurement contracts has Paolo Bellini at its centre, head of the Complex Technical Administrative Unit on the Signaling and Automation systems of the Metropolitan Lines 1,2,3 and 5. According to the prosecutors Giovanni Polizzi and Maurizio Romanelli who ordered numerous searches, Bellini allegedly collected 125.000 euros in bribes between October 2018 and July 2019. Some companies such as Siemens Mobility and Alstom Ferroviaria, Ceit and Engineering Informatica were involved in various capacities and were searched.
Even a manager of Siemens Ag, the representative of the sales sector Rudolf Unverzagt, is under investigation for the hypothesis of bid rigging and corruption together with the Italian project manager Camillo Gallizioli, for having promised Bellini in 2019 that Siemens, once awarded the The contract for the new signaling system of the "green" metro line 2 would have made use of a series of subcontractors indicated by the ATM manager who was economically interested in it. The German manager was not arrested while Gallizioli ended up in handcuffs after being framed by unequivocal wiretaps.
The contract in question for the "green" line 2 is the twin of the 2006 one for the "red" line 1, which in recent months has caused several accidents (including injuries among passengers) due to sudden safety braking and unjustified. In an interception, Bellini seems to evoke that even 14 years ago there was some disturbance in the tender, because, referring to the current contract, he suggests that «... it will happen as it happened in line 1...». But the investigation does not concern that 2006 contract, and any hypothesis of crime would in any case already be time-barred. The prosecutor Francesco Greco in a statement writes «elements have been collected relating to a further and more dating episode of corruption, which occurred in 2006 for the awarding of the contract relating to the signaling system of the M1 Metropolitan line, in the context of which the recent critical issues (abrupt emergency braking) which have affected the red line".
Regarding another contract, for Bellini, the "laying of the `wrong' cable" would have "certainly gone unnoticed" except for an accident. «A fire, a short circuit… to get to that the tunnel has to burn down».
Among the charges raised in various ways against some of those arrested there is also the hypothesis of criminal association for Paolo Bellini who, in addition to asking in some cases as a bribe a sort of monthly "salary" of a few thousand euros for the entire duration of the contracts tainted by disturbances, as the main economic benefit he aimed each time to secure from the companies the subcontracting of part of the supplies to a company (then put into liquidation and replaced by another) of which he was de facto director alongside the official directors . Among the thirty charges brought against the suspects who were subjected to precautionary measures, there are also episodes of revelation of official secrecy (due to the "leaked" information on the tender specifications), embezzlement and abuse of office.
The mayor of Milano Giuseppe Sala commented: «It is disheartening to discover that while everyone is committed and works for the good of the community, some dishonest person jeopardizes the work done by an entire company. Atm is a Milanese excellence and its work must not and will not be tarnished by the misdeeds of a few. Obviously I expect immediate measures from the company against those involved in the legal proceedings and a serious check of the company processes."
«Atm immediately lent its active collaboration to the investigating authorities – we read in a note from the Milanese transport company – also with the aim of determining as soon as possible the elements relating to the responsibilities of the subjects under investigation and taking all the consequent measures to regard. The Company is completely unrelated to the disputed facts, attributed to individual subjects who, as far as we know, acted independently in violation of the ATM Code of Ethics even before in violation of the law. Consequently, ATM has already appointed its lawyers to protect the Company in all appropriate places."
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