The Constitutional Court slams the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office

Another blow for the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, and this time it comes from none other than the Constitutional Court, which has declared inadmissible the questions of constitutional legitimacy raised by the Milan investigating magistrate, at the request of the public prosecutors, regarding the nature of the Milano-Cortina Foundation, which was responsible for the management, organisation and promotion of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games held in February. In the spring of 2024, the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into seven individuals, including the foundation’s former chief executive, Vincenzo Novari, and various businesspeople, on suspicion of corruption and bid-rigging in relation to two tenders for digital services. The point is that, since its establishment in 2019, the foundation has been conceived as a private-law body, so as to enable it to act swiftly in the tendering process. Consequently, as it is not a public body, it is not possible to allege the offences of corruption (which requires the involvement of a public official) or bid-rigging (which implies the existence of tenders based on specific criteria) against the foundation’s managers and the businesspeople. The Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, however, through a creative interpretation of the law, insisted that the Milano-Cortina 2026 Foundation was in fact a public body. In June 2024, the government therefore went so far as to adopt a decree providing an authoritative interpretation of the law, reaffirming that the foundation was a private body. The Public Prosecutor’s Office described the measure as an interference of “unprecedented gravity” because it blocked the investigations. Hence the appeal to the Constitutional Court. The constitutional judges, however, rejected the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s line of argument, stating that it was based on an “erroneous interpretation of the legal framework” because as early as 2020 there was a provision that had established that the foundation was a private body. In short, the only action of unprecedented gravity was that of the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, based – once again – on a ‘creative’ conception of justice.