Luigi de Magistris (politician)

Luigi de Magistris

Luigi de Magistris (born June 20, 1967 in Naples ) is an Italian public prosecutor and politician. He became known as a public prosecutor through several corruption investigations against some prominent politicians. He has been the mayor of Naples since 2011. He was previously a member of the European Parliament from the 2009 European elections .

Career as a public prosecutor

De Magistris began his professional career as a public prosecutor in 1995. From 1998 to 2002 he worked in Naples, then in Catanzaro . Here he was investigating the so-called Poseidone case, which dealt with the embezzlement of structural funds from the European Union in the amount of 200 million euros by Italian politicians. The investigation was started by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and handed over to de Magistris in 2005. In 2007, de Magistris was withdrawn from the case on charges of disclosing confidential information about it. This included the names of various suspects, including a senator from Forza Italia .

In 2007, de Magistris dealt with the Why-not case, which also involved the misappropriation of public funds. Numerous well-known politicians were also affected by the investigation, including the Italian Minister of Justice Clemente Mastella . This again led to allegations that de Magistris had made the names of suspects public; Mastella therefore publicly called for his transfer. Eventually, de Magistris' case was withdrawn for alleged bias against Mastella. In later proceedings against de Magistris before the supreme self-governing body of the Italian judiciary ( Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura ), however, the charge of bias was refuted, as was the charge of the publication of official secrets. Through this case, de Magistris became known in the Italian press and appeared several times on Italian television.

In 2007, de Magistris was also involved in the Toghe Lucane case , a major corruption case in Basilicata that affected several well-known politicians, state lawyers, lawyers and administrative officials. In this case too, Justice Minister Mastella demanded that de Magistris should have the case withdrawn, and again it was alleged that de Magistris had published official secrets in connection with the investigation.

The Disciplinary Senate of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura sentenced de Magistris in February 2008 for a number of legal violations (including ordering house searches without a basis, 26 arrests without the permission of the investigating magistrate, initiating secret proceedings in violation of the fundamental rights of those affected) and transferred his sentence to a judge's post a.

Political career

In March 2009, de Magistris announced that he would quit his work as a public prosecutor and instead enter politics and stand on the list of the Italia dei Valori (IdV) party in the 2009 European elections in Italy . The IdV is led by Antonio Di Pietro , who himself was a public prosecutor in known corruption cases.

In the elections, de Magistris won a mandate, and after Silvio Berlusconi he was able to get the most preferential votes of all politicians . De Magistris retracted his election campaign promise to give up his post in the judiciary after the election. In the European Parliament he joined like all IdV politician of the Liberal Group ALDE and was chairman of the Committee on Budgetary Control selected.

In May 2011, de Magistris ran as the top candidate of a left-wing liberal party alliance for local elections in Naples . He surprisingly relegated Mario Morcone , the representative of the Partito Democratico of Mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino (who was no longer up for election), to third place and thus moved into the runoff election for mayor against Giovanni Lettieri , the candidate of the center-right Alliance, in which he prevailed with 65 to 35 percent. On July 18, 2011, he then resigned his mandate as a MEP.

In December 2012 de Magistris left Italia dei Valori and founded his own political movement Movimento Arancione . With this he entered on the list of the left-wing electoral alliance Rivoluzione Civile by Antonio Ingroia for the parliamentary elections in Italy 2013 ; however, the alliance failed to make it into the House of Representatives with 2.3% of the vote. In February 2017, the Democrazia Autonomia (DemA) movement, which had supported him in the local elections in 2016, in which he was re-elected as mayor, became a party of the same name, which was part of the left-wing electoral alliance Liberi e Uguali for the 2018 parliamentary elections in Italy started.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ L'Espresso , April 5, 2007: The lodge of deals ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English translation by the European Commission). 
2. ↑ "Mastella al Csm:" Trasferire i giudici di Catanzaro "" ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: La Stampa (September 21, 2007) 
3. ↑ La Stampa , October 20, 2007: La Procura generale di Catanzaro avoca l'inchiesta di De Magistris ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Italian). 
4. ^ La Repubblica , February 23, 2009: De Magistris? Non sapeva nulla di Mastella (Italian).
5. ↑ Judgment of the Disciplinary Senate of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura of February 19, 2008, Az. N.3 / 2008 ( Memento of the original of November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Judgment of the Disciplinary Senate of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura of February 19, 2008, Az. N.3 / 2008 ( Memento of the original of November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Counts B, E, G and H 
7. ↑ Europarl.it, June 10, 2009: Elezioni europee 2009: i risultati e gli eletti (Italian).
8. ^ "De Magistris lascia la toga per candidarsi con Di Pietro" in Reuters (March 17, 2008)
9. ^ "Il mestiere di magistrato non è un abito che si dismette e si butta via" in: Corriere della Sera (July 28, 2009)
10. ↑ De Magistris batte Lettieri 2 a 1. Retrieved May 30, 2011 . 

Web links

• official homepage
• Entry on Luigi de Magistris in the Members' database of the European Parliament
• VoteWatch.eu: Luigi de Magistris's voting behavior in the European Parliament (in English)