In Italy, justice is interested in the management of Covid-19 by Giuseppe Conte. The former Prime Minister, in office at the start of the pandemic, is under investigation for possible negligence in his management of this health crisis, the media reported on Wednesday evening.
The public prosecutor’s office in Bergamo, a Lombard city in the north of the country which had one of the main sources of coronavirus when it arrived in Europe, closed its investigation after three years, according to the main daily newspapers including Il Corriere della Sera. Giuseppe Conte, Prime Minister from 2018 to 2021 and current president of the 5 Star Movement (populist opposition party), had been heard in June 2020 by a magistrate on the management of this crisis.
Reproaches for the non-creation of a “red zone”
The magistrates suspect the former president of the council and his government of having underestimated the spread of the virus although the data at his disposal showed that the situation in Bergamo and the surrounding region was rapidly worsening, while the forces of the order were already prepared to isolate these areas from the rest of the country.
The magistrates reproach them in particular for not having created between March 3 and March 9, 2020 a “red zone” comprising two municipalities in this zone, Nembro and Alzano Lombardo, particularly affected by Covid-19. This is what the Bergamo public prosecutor’s office accuses of 19 people targeted by a preliminary investigation, including, in addition to Giuseppe Conte, his Minister of Health Roberto Speranza, the President of the Lombardy region Attilio Fontana, still in office, and his deputy to Health at the time, Giulio Gallera.
The first “red zones” had been established at the end of February 2020 by decision of the government in a dozen Lombard municipalities, in particular Codogno, the city of “patient number one”. According to the hypothesis formulated by the Bergamo prosecutors, who are based on scientific expertise, the confinement of this area of Bergamo would have saved several thousand lives.
The former Prime Minister, quoted by several media including Il Corrierereacted to this announcement by saying “serene”, ensuring “having acted with the greatest commitment and a great sense of responsibility during one of the hardest times experienced by our Republic”.