The investigation into urban planning in Milan helps us understand the shortcomings of the justice system when it comes to freedom

A reflection—at the very least a useful one—regarding the Milanese investigation into the violation of ‘urban planning democracy’ requires us to answer a very simple question: what do we find anomalous in a sequence of proceedings (application for an interim order, granting of the order by the investigating magistrate, quashing of the review, appeal to the Court of Cassation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and a final decision by the Court of Cassation overturning the order) which bears all the hallmarks of a normal judicial process? 

There is more than one issue, in fact. Firstly, the time taken by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to request the case be dismissed, despite a precautionary ruling having been reached within an unusually short timeframe. The precautionary orders were enforced in July 2025; the Review Court revoked the majority of them as early as August, filing its reasons in mid-September 2025; the Public Prosecutor’s Office appealed to the Court of Cassation against the Review Court’s decisions; the Supreme Court ruled on 12 November 2025, with a decision that definitively dismantled the logical and legal foundations of the investigation, declaring the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s appeal inadmissible, upholding the remaining appeals by the defence, and, above all, ruling out the very possibility of the alleged corruption offences having been committed. Four months – a record time to bring an investigation to a close – yet the Public Prosecutor’s Office is keeping it alive, without any apparent justification, for a further year.

The second anomalous aspect concerns the use of pre-trial detention against those under investigation. To order, in a judicial inquiry of such blatant inconsistency, the deprivation of personal liberty of individuals, the vast majority of whom have no previous criminal record, speaks volumes about the degree of indifference shown by a large and influential section of the Italian judiciary towards the supreme value of personal liberty for those under investigation. Nor can one seriously believe that house arrest, rather than imprisonment, serves to mitigate the impact – which is in any case devastating for the suspect and their family – of a measure of such gravity.

In short, this case constitutes yet another confirmation of a more than well-founded fear, namely that the adoption of precautionary measures is all too often viewed by public prosecutors and investigating magistrates as a measure of the investigation’s importance and the seriousness of the offences it purports to have uncovered. In short, the exclamation mark is essential; without it, an investigation risks being automatically classified as secondary or marginal, relegating itself to the shadows of media attention, with a resulting social impact that falls short of its ambitions.

This is particularly serious – and this is the third point for consideration – when one considers that the legal principles on which those precautionary measures, and with them the entire investigation, were overturned by the Court of Cassation, form part of a body of case law on the offence of corruption that has been well-established for several years now, which the public prosecutor’s office and the investigating magistrate could not have been unaware of, and with which they are certainly thoroughly familiar. The Court of Cassation has affirmed and reiterated in every possible way that, for that offence to be established, it is not sufficient merely to identify possible conflicts of interest in the interactions between the private individual and the public official; rather, proof is required – and, at the precautionary stage, at least strong indications – of the existence of a corrupt agreement deliberately and knowingly constructed by both parties around that conflict of interest.

The Court has long held that an allegation of a very serious offence such as corruption cannot be based merely on the observation – as in the present case – that certain members of the Town Planning Commission were professionals who, at entirely different times and in entirely separate contexts, had been awarded contracts by the very same companies that had been awarded the public contracts approved by the Commission itself. There must be serious, substantial and recognisable evidence that this potential conflict of interest explicitly and concertedly inspired the unlawful intentions of both the private individual and the public official. This investigation has simply disregarded those principles so firmly and repeatedly affirmed by the Court of Cassation, acting in clear and flagrant violation of them: that is, inferring the corrupt agreement purely by deduction from the mere observation of a possible conflict of interest.

To have conducted an investigation entirely outside the scope of established and well-known legal principles, and moreover by resorting to precautionary measures, with an immediate and significant impact on the structures of legitimate democratic institutions, seems to me to be the most alarming aspect of this affair; yet it is destined – as is invariably the case in such situations – to fade away quietly, much like we switch off the television after watching a bad film.