“Great engineer,” councilor Falcone called him on the phone. “How are we combined, my dear?” The commissioner asked for the works to reopen the construction sites, asked for continuous checks on the activities of the companies. Evidently he did not suspect Puccia’s double play. Although the investigation by the judiciary three years ago should have triggered a little more attention at the top of the Cas. Instead, no. The engineer Puccia continued to be the ras of the works.
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The doubts of the ministry
Meanwhile, the Permanent Tunnel Commission, set up at the Ministry of Infrastructures, also had suspicions and asked about the construction sites that were slowly going. “They wrote and we did not reply,” said commissioner Falcone to Puccia in another phone call intercepted on April 14, 2018 (“Engineer, sorry if I disturb you, hello, I wanted to tell you this …”). But Puccia defended himself: “As long as I was responsible for the proceedings, they wrote and I replied.” The commissioner insisted, from the ministry they asked for account and reason for too many irregularities in some galleries on Palermo-Messina. And he said, “I’m going to tell you what the situation is like.” Puccia glissava, meanwhile, however, as a good politician (he is a municipal councilor in Castelbuono) he tried to weave his network of relationships. Once, he phoned the commissioner: “I didn’t want to disturb you …”. Announced the reopening of the gallery “Capo d’Orlando”: «We still have Sant’Alessio … I am defining as well, I was calling to … I have to speak only with her, I still have no relations with the president, but I prefer talk with her”. Curious that it was not the director of the Consortium who maintained relations with the top management, but a simple engineer. But evidently Puccia continued to have great power within the Cas.
The variant
Here is one of the stories that emerge from the investigation of the Messina prosecutor’s office. In two important galleries, the “Tindari” and the “Capo d’Orlando”, renovations had been launched for a total of 20 million, but a fundamental system for security was missing, that of remote control. Consisting of the radio transmission system and the so-called “supervision for all technological tunnel systems” systems. Two “separate variant appraisals” were made to fix things in those two galleries. Expensive variants, signed by the construction manager Alfonso Schepisi, also involved in the investigation, and validated by the sole manager of the procedure Angelo Puccia. “With reasons that are deemed not to meet the requirements of current legislation,” wrote the Anti-Mafia Investigation Department. The remote control system should have been included in the original project. Instead, much more money was spent to bring the galleries up to standard. The Dia still says: “The remote control system, as foreseen in the report to the pre-tender project, was not included in the financed executive projects”.-
Letter of clarification
Two years ago, the Dia di Messina asked Cas for clarifications on that strange variant. Puccia was intercepted while telling Schepisi to prepare a response: “The remote control was initially in the project scheme, but considering the limited sums it was removed”. Schepisi suggested that they were hoping for an offer from the contracting firm.
For Dia, “what emerged in the present investigation against Schepisi and Puccia constitutes the photograph of a systematic modus operandi which has no connotations of occasionality and which is adopted despite the fact that the two engineers were accused of crimes of a similar nature, following two separate investigative activities (called “Tekno” and “Project incentives”) conducted by this operating section “.
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