The Chamber denies prosecutors access to Delmastro’s chat records in a farcical move that is humiliating for true defenders of due process

With 206 votes in favour and 133 against, the Chamber of Deputies refused to allow the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office to obtain the chat records between MP Andrea Delmastro and Mauro Caroccia, who is under investigation and believed to be a front man for the Senese clan. The decision came at the end of a disheartening debate. On the one hand, the opposition, with leaders Conte and Schlein taking the floor, accused the centre-right of seeking to obstruct a mafia investigation, wearing blindfolds and waving their mobile phones. On the other, FdI, through Bignami, invoked the Cospito case, accusing the opposition of defending mafia members; he called on Conte to hand over the chat logs dating from the Covid-19 period and even insulted the memory of Scalfaro. 

In short, it all ended up being a ‘farce’, as Senate President Ignazio La Russa put it, who in turn had to suspend proceedings in the Senate due to protests by M5S senators (who chanted ‘Release the chats, release the chats’). Amid this chaos, the purpose of the assessment that the Chamber of Deputies was called upon to carry out regarding the Delmastro case was lost; this purpose was, however, clearly highlighted in the opinion drafted by Forza Italia’s Pietro Pittalis in the Authorisations Committee.

The Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office has seized Caroccia’s smartphone; he is under investigation for money laundering and the fictitious registration of assets, with the aggravating circumstance of mafia involvement, and subsequently, correctly, requested authorisation from the Chamber of Deputies to access the chat messages on the phone between the suspect and Delmastro, who for about a year was Caroccia’s business partner in the company that controlled the now-famous restaurant “Bisteccheria d’Italia”. Less correctly, however, as pointed out by Pittalis, the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office sent the Chamber of Deputies a request to access the chat records that was entirely generic, that is, “lacking the requirements of necessity, specificity, selectivity and proportionality” required by the Constitution.

Just to give an idea, the public prosecutor’s office has not even specified the time frame of the conversations it intends to obtain (even though it is known that Delmastro was a partner of Caroccia from December 2024 to November 2025), nor has it clarified the reasons why the seizure is necessary (and why, for example, the seizure of corporate, accounting and financial documentation is not sufficient).

The truth, as highlighted in the Chamber by Forza Italia MP Davide Bellomo, is that the seizure of conversations by the public prosecutor’s office would be deemed unlawful even if it did not involve a Member of Parliament, such as Delmastro, but an ordinary citizen. “Our code does not permit indiscriminate and exploratory seizures,” stated Bellomo. ‘The judicial authorities cannot request the seizure of the entire contents of a digital archive on the assumption that something useful to the investigation might emerge from it. Such an approach would reverse the logic of criminal proceedings: evidence must be sought because it has already been identified or is at least identifiable, not because it might otherwise be found as a result of indiscriminate seizure. This is the view of the Supreme Court of Cassation.’

“Even before asking ourselves whether the protection provided for in Article 68 of the Constitution applies, we must ask ourselves one question: does the public prosecutor’s request meet the conditions laid down in the Code of Criminal Procedure for the seizure of any citizen’s correspondence? The answer is clearly no,” explained Bellomo, emphasising the lack of the conditions of proportionality, necessity and indispensability in the request made by the public prosecutor’s office headed by Francesco Lo Voi.

In other words, it fell to Forza Italia to explain the substantive reasons why the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office’s request should be sent back to the sender. Meanwhile, FdI preferred to respond to the opposition’s political manoeuvring by, in turn, exploiting other issues – from the Cospito case to the face masks purchased during the pandemic – with all due respect to the principles of due process. FdI group leader Galeazzo Bignami even accused the left of having elected Oscar Luigi Scalfaro as Head of State in 1992, claiming he “released 300 mafia members”. These remarks provoked outrage from the opposition, which called on the Bureau to suspend the FdI MP. A far from edifying spectacle.