I'll tell you how waste and the corruption system work (Piergiorgio Baita)

The Mose scandal, a symbol of widespread lawlessness. A strategic project to save Venice, where thousands of people have stolen for half a century. Some arrested for a few days, others only prosecuted. But no one will pay anything, thanks to the statute of limitations and state delays. The whole story is told in a book.

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corruption mose venice

MOSE CORRUPTION VENICE –

Corruption seen up close, very close. Its epicenter, a true symbol of the rotten system of daily illegality that binds together politics and public administration, businesses and fixers, professionals and consultants. We are in the Venice lagoon, before a work of the national system, the famous MOSE, designed and patented to protect Venice from the corrosive phenomenon of high water . It consists of 78 mobile barriers, positioned on the lagoon floor to close the three mouths of the harbor.

ALSO READ: Corruption in Italy: Laws and authorities aren't enough. We need to rediscover honesty, a now obsolete word.

MOSE SCANDAL IN VENICE –

The project was envisioned by a special law in 1966, and now, if all goes well, it will be completed in 2018. More than half a century later. Meanwhile, the cost of the work to install the safety barrier has skyrocketed to the astronomical figure of 5,49 billion euros , an immense waste, including the fees paid to 316 consultants recruited only through the inspections. When the judiciary finally decided to pry into the mechanisms of the Mose contract in June 2014, 35 people were arrested and over a thousand were investigated . A mountain of money was stolen and wasted, without the strategic project ever coming to light. Meanwhile, the government, faced with the gravity of the scandal, decided to appoint three commissioners.

MOSE SCANDAL: THE INVESTIGATED –

And here we move from drama to mockery and farce. The commissioners themselves, starting with Luigi Magistro, warn how the Great Corruption of the Mose will end: in nothing . Everyone will be acquitted, and will not serve any sentence, thanks to the statute of limitations . Those who took the money will not pay back a single euro, the State that was supposed to monitor, and failed to do so, will foot the bill without recovering anything. And the citizens, without Mose, find themselves having financed, with their taxes, a mountain of corruption for the benefit of a club of inveterate swindlers.

TO KNOW MORE: The value of honesty is not just a question of money, which is why corruption is rampant.

MOSE INVESTIGATION VENICE –

To understand in detail how corruption works in Italy, to reveal every step, every detail (including impunity), you can't miss the book "Corruption: A Witness Tells the System of Malaffare" (Einaudi), edited by journalist Serena Uccello. In this book, Piergiorgio Baita, one of the key figures in the world of contracts for the construction of major infrastructure projects, such as the Mose (Mose) project, speaks out and spills the beans . A defendant in several trials, a man who, as CEO of the Mantovani company and as a director of the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, has experienced corruption firsthand. All the way to the judicial avalanche, prison, and trials. A key player in the system, therefore, and also a firsthand observer, capable of reconstructing every piece of a system that, unfortunately, currently appears to have no barriers.

( Cover image source: MOSE Venice )

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