REGGIO CALABRIA – An investigation has allegedly unearthed multiple instances of rigged competitions and university funds used for private expenses at the city’s university and gathered 52 suspects, eight of whom have been given precautionary measures, judicial sources said.

 The prosecutor opened the investigation following a statement by architect Clara Stella Vicari Aversa who was advised to "wait her turn" to obtain a position as a researcher. Among the suspects is Rita Elvira Adamo, daughter of the former vice president of the region Nicola Adamo, and the deputy of the Democratic Party Enza Bruno Bossio, who was "recommended" by the former rector Pasquale Catanoso for a doctoral post.

  The conduct is thought to have taken place in various instances between 2014 and 2020.

  After losing out of the researcher positions, Aversa decided to appeal, but her superiors - it seems from the investigation - suggested that she give up the judicial action and "wait your turn" to have access to future professional opportunities within the department.

 “The professor explained to me that, despite having a lot of professional respect for me and having always received positive feedback on my work from various clients, she needed that competition to be won by one of her three [researchers],” Aversa said in her statement.

  The investigating judge Vittorio Quaranta issued eight precautionary measures against six teachers and two employees of the university. Among the professors involved are the rector Santo Marcello Zimbone (suspended from service for 10 months) and the vice rector and former rector Pasquale Catanoso (for 12 months). The other four have been suspended for between two and six months. They are the associate professor of the architecture department (and former director general of the university) Ottavio Salvatore Amaro, the director of the same department Adolfo Santini, director of the of law department Massimiliano Ferrara and the associate professor of the same, Antonino Mazza Laboccetta.

 Suspensions were also ordered for two officials from the technical-scientific and data processing area of ​​the university, Alessandro Taverriti and Rosario Russo.

 The investigation has also revealed, writes the investigating judge, “appropriation of the institution's financial resources through the use, for non-institutional expenses, of a credit card combined with one of the current accounts held by the University,” by former rector Catanoso, under the guide of “management.”

 “The picture that emerges from the recent investigative findings is nothing short of disarming. It is hard to believe that a man of the institutions, one of the most important for the cultural, civil and economic growth of the country, was able to do what we saw in retracing the investigative findings, with an uncommon boldness,” continued the ordinance. “The facts show a lack of sense of the institutions.”

 According to the investigation, the former rector "appropriated the existing funds through a systematic use for the satisfaction of personal and non-institutional needs: in particular, he used repeatedly, in the period from Jan. 2017 to July 2019, the card for payments concerning the purchase of gifts with which to pay homage to his acquaintances in the institutional, political and university fields, for trips to Paris and Rome not justified by official commitments but aimed at visiting his daughter, for lunches and dinners for pleasure, and for the purchase of train tickets and travel by taxi for himself and his relatives.”

 "The ambitions of power, of personal growth, have forced him to behave in a certain way and to enslave the institutions to his personal interests.”

 The judge deems current rector Santo Marcello Zimbone to have acted in the same vein as his predecessor, pursuing “the illicit management without interruption, endorsing and guaranteeing the directors of the departments and teachers the preservation of their positions privileged, as well as the career progression of the candidates reported from time to time, also through interference in the formation of the examining committees.” He too “carried out repeated conducts of appropriation of university resources such as service cars for the satisfaction of private needs, as well as disturbed freedom in the choice of contractor in the tender procedures aimed at awarding works contracts.”

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