The Supreme Court confirms the sentence of 6 years and 8 months in prison for Graziano Mesina, for aggravated usury and extortion. The Court declared the appeal presented by the former Scarlet Pimpernel of Supramonte inadmissible. The same judges also rejected the appeal presented by Pierluigi Meloni, former director of a branch of Banco di Sardegna in Sassari, sentenced together with Mesina to 5 years. The facts date back to 2011, when the Sassari entrepreneur Marco Milia, manager of Robur Basket, asked the Banco di Sardegna branch for a loan of 40 thousand euros to register for the national championship. The branch manager, instead of giving him the money, directed him to Mesina. Milia concluded the negotiation but was then threatened and forced to return 50 thousand euros instead of the 40 thousand received.
The sentence
The Court of Cassation confirmed the sentence of May 2022 by the Court of Appeal of Sassari, the same one imposed in the first instance before the preliminary hearing judge of the Sassari Court. Mesina's defense has always maintained that there was never contact with Milia. The investigation started from some wiretaps in the affair that saw Mesina convicted of a criminal association that ran drug trafficking from 2009 to 2013.
The motivations
The lawyers of Mesina and Meloni, the lawyers Beatrice Goddi, Giuseppe De Napoli, Filippo Dinacci and Agostinangelo Marras, had based their appeals precisely on those interceptions, maintaining the unusability of the interceptions ordered and authorized in another proceeding. Furthermore, Mesina's defense had argued that the former bandit had already been convicted for the extortion episodes during the criminal conspiracy trial. But for the Court of Cassation the convictions for previous extortion "have nothing in common with the case in question". The judges, while declaring the wiretaps unusable for usury, reiterated their usability for extortion, agreeing with the Court of Appeal because it «enhanced the authenticity and credibility of the victim, comforted, in relation to the extortion, from the collections" and underlining that Meloni "by playing a role of assistance in the delivery of the sums and in the collection phase, exerted pressure to coerce the will of the offended person, in the interests of Mesina".
Fabio Ledda
