Davigo (re)convicted: the Court of Cassation has confirmed his guilt for the sixth time in the Amara case

Piercamillo Davigo joined the ranks of those with a criminal record in December 2024, when the Court of Cassation found the former public prosecutor guilty of breaching confidentiality regarding the transcripts of interrogations provided by lawyer Piero Amara to the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office concerning the so-called ‘Ungheria lodge’. On Wednesday evening, the Court of Cassation upheld Davigo’s conviction even for the offences for which it had referred the case back for a retrial on appeal, thereby making the final sentence of one year and three months against the former public prosecutor and former president of the ANM official. This marks the sixth ruling (first instance, appeal, Court of Cassation, extraordinary appeal to the Court of Cassation, second appeal and second review by the Court of Cassation) finding the former magistrate – a symbol of the ‘Mani Pulite’ operation – guilty.

In April 2020, Davigo, then a member of the High Council of the Judiciary, persuaded the Milanese public prosecutor Paolo Storari to hand over to him the transcripts of Amara’s interrogations concerning the existence of the elusive ‘Ungheria’ lodge. This took place, as the judges of the Court of Cassation stated, despite Davigo being well aware that the legitimate course of action to resolve the ‘deadlock’ at the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office – which Storari had highlighted in relation to those revelations – was quite different, namely to report the situation to the Milan Public Prosecutor General’s Office. In the view of the judges of the Court of Cassation, Davigo “knowingly set in motion an alternative course of action which was, by its very nature, bound to jeopardise the confidentiality of the information protected by investigative secrecy”, which is precisely what subsequently occurred.

After receiving the classified minutes, Davigo disclosed their contents to various members of the CSM, his secretaries and even external figures such as the then chair of the Anti-Mafia Commission, Nicola Morra. This led to an unprecedented leak, to the extent that those minutes even found their way into the newspapers.

The judgement on the first breach of confidentiality – that committed by Davigo when he obtained the documents from Storari (who, for his part, was acquitted: the paradoxes of the Italian justice system) – became final in December 2024, when the Court of Cassation upheld the appeal judgement, which in turn had upheld the first-instance sentence of one year and three months (with a suspended sentence). However, the Court of Cassation had requested a new appeal hearing limited to Davigo’s conduct in disclosing the minutes to third parties. According to the prosecution, Davigo disclosed the contents of the minutes to several members of the High Council of the Judiciary (CSM), both fellow faction members and others, to his secretaries and even to a Member of Parliament (Morra) with the aim of discrediting another CSM member, Sebastiano Ardita, who was mentioned in the documents but not under investigation in the proceedings concerning the ‘Ungheria’ lodge (an investigation which, incidentally, would later be dismissed).

Last January, the Brescia Court of Appeal upheld the judgement in response to the observations of the Court of Cassation. The judges criticised Davigo’s conduct, emphasising that he had used ‘secret society methods’ – that is, ‘in the courtyard and with mobile phones switched off’ – to reveal the contents of Amara’s statements, speaking to various individuals, including members of the High Council of the Judiciary (CSM), ‘but individually and differently from person to person’: to one he gave the transcripts, to another he revealed a snippet, to yet another he let slip half the story. And he did so not at random, but ‘relating what he believed and omitting the circumstances he did not deem appropriate to reveal’.

On Wednesday evening, the Court of Cassation handed down its latest ruling, which also confirmed Davigo’s conviction as final. For years, the former public prosecutor has criticised the excessive use of appeals, which, in his view, are a tool used by the powerful and white-collar criminals to ‘get away with it’. It remains to be seen whether Davigo will now, following yet another setback in the Court of Cassation, lodge a fifth appeal – perhaps by taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Ermes Antonucci