The woman had been appointed Knight of Merit by the Head of State after the Covid emergency. The vice principal and a private professional are also under house arrest. The European Public Prosecutor’s investigation: food and IT devices intended for students would have been “constantly withdrawn”
Daniela Lo Verde principal symbol of the comprehensive institute Giovanni Falcone of Zen 2 in Palermoamong the citizens appointed Knight of Merit by the Head of State, Sergio Mattarella, for having particularly distinguished themselves in community service during the Coronavirus emergency, was arrested at dawn today by the Palermo carabinieri as part of an investigation for embezzlement and corruption coordinated by the prosecutors of the European Prosecutor Gery Ferarra and Amelia Luise. The vice principal of the school and a private professional ended up under house arrest with her. The investigative activity of the Eppo section of the Palermo Investigative Nucleus, taken in February last year and continued until a few days ago, made it possible to ascertain the existence of a “unitary center of illicit interests” in the Falcone Comprehensive Institute of the Zen district of Palermo, “formed by the principal, the vice principal and private professionals who, in competition with each other, would have been responsible for the alleged crimes, relating to the management of public spending funds, both national and European, in the context of various school projects”.
According to the survey, allegedly falsely certified the presence of pupils within the school even in extra-curricular hours to justify the existence of Pon projects in fact never realized or realized only in part, in the consideration that the non-participation of the students would have had a directly proportional effect on the portion of the funds destined for each Pon to the management.
It’s still: food and IT devices intended for students would have been “constantly withdrawn” by the principal and her deputy for “their own and exclusive needs”. This is the cross-section that would emerge from the investigation. The operation, conventionally called ‘The Consciousness of Zen-O’, revealed, the investigators explain, “a management of the institute aimed at taking care of interests of a purely personal nature, also with regard to the procedures for purchasing and supplying foodstuffs for the school canteen service.
Furthermore, according to the indictment, the Institute’s management entrusted “permanently, contra legem, the supply of technological material to a single company by virtue of a corruptive agreement aimed at the assignment of further and important orders in exchange for multiple illicit donations of state-of-the-art technological tools”.
According to the investigators, the principal and her deputy considered the public administration as “a well from which to constantly draw any utility, from the latest technological tools to food”. “Their conduct – the investigators explain – is particularly serious in the light of their complete adherence to the logic of purely utilitarian conduct, the exploitation of administrative action and the vocation to consider the public administration as a well from which to constantly draw any utility, from latest generation technological tools to foodstuffs”.
To aggravate the picture, according to the men of the Arma, there would be the fact that the principal would have “constantly fueled her public image as a promoter of legality, despite the daily illegal action and the constant attention to the economic implications of her administrative action, of done by abandoning the exercise of its typical role of control and management aimed at the smooth running of the Falcone institute, which is aimed at a particularly fragile user group, made up of students who are already penalized by a social and cultural context of degradation such as that in which the Zen district pours”.
It was the complaint of a former teacher of the Falcone institute that triggered the investigation. The operation by the carabinieri of the Eppo section of the Investigative nucleus of Palermo shed light on “a unitary center of illicit interests, rooted within the comprehensive institute” in the management of funds, both national and European, in the context of various projects school.
Source-www.adnkronos.com