Mazzette at the Motorization of Palermo, 21 arrests

Corruption at the Civil Motorization of Palermo was a “custom”. The judge of the preliminary investigations of Palermo is certain of this who, accepting the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, today ordered house arrest for 21 people: officials and employees of the office and owners of practices handling agencies involved in a maxi round of bribes. An investigation that reveals once again the irregular conduct of several public officials willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for money. A new judicial storm, therefore, hits the Motorization of Palermo, which has come under investigation for the sixth time since 1996. And among the protagonists of the investigation, coordinated by the prosecutors of the capital and carried out by the police, there is a name known to the investigators , that of the official of the institution Luigi Costa. During the search of his home, 590 thousand euros in cash were found. Accused of corruption, abuse and violation of the computer system, in 2013 he had negotiated a sentence of one year and 3 months for forgery and, even then, for abusive access to the computer system. The official had been moved to the regional transport department, but after a few years he had returned to the DMV. In addition to him, 7 employees and 13 owners of practical processing agencies ended up under house arrest. The crimes of corruption, abusive access to the computer or telematic system and ideological falsehood were contested. The investigation started in 2020 from investigations into the recycling of cars and from a monitoring of nationalization practices, i.e. the registration of vehicles from abroad, processed by the Motorization of Palermo. It thus emerged that over the years the nationalizations carried out at the Palermo Civil Motorization office had had a constant growth trend, going from 7,740 in 2016 to 20,465 in 2019. What struck the investigators was also that the holders were for more than ‘eighty percent resident outside the province of Palermo and that almost all of the practices had been commissioned by a small number of Palermo agencies, which, in fact, had a monopoly on the market. Consulting the databases, the police discovered numerous anomalies and irregularities in the definition of the practices examined: not only those of nationalization, but also of testing, duplicates of vehicle registration certificates and registration of agricultural machinery. In nationalizations, the practices would have been perfected without the documentation being complete or regular; vehicle tests, although mandatory, would not have been carried out and duplicate registration certificates would have been issued to modify the vehicle data in the absence of the requirements established by the law. According to investigators, eight DMV officials assigned to the so-called ‘vehicle area’ turned a blind eye to the practices in exchange for money received from the owners of some agencies. The money would have been placed inside the folders with the documentation that each agency deposited at the offices of the DMV to allow the examination of the official in charge. In many cases, the deliveries of bribes in favor of public officials were filmed through environmental interceptions. Over 60 episodes for which public officials are under investigation for corruption.