A shared criminal scheme that, according to the defense, was never proven. That is the point defense lawyers kept returning to during the trial over alleged criminal association linked to the so-called Galassia Cis affair. All the requests point in the same direction — acquittal — with lawyers arguing that professional and personal relationships among the defendants are not enough to prove the existence of a criminal alliance or each individual’s participation in it.
As reported by L’Informazione di San Marino, during the hearing before Judge Isabella Pasini, defense counsel for Ugo Granata, Raffaele Mazzeo, Roberto Moretti, Alberto Buriani, Marino Grandoni and Marco Mularoni all took the floor.
One image used during the closing arguments summed up the defense’s objections: “A criminal association built by stacking case files on top of one another, not on the basis of evidence, but through episodes, inferences and suspicions that, like an underground river, disappear only to resurface later.”
For the lawyers, that is precisely the problem: episodes that had already been shelved or went through trials that ended in acquittal are being brought back to support the charge of criminal association. The defense is challenging this reconstruction, demanding that prosecutors point to actual evidence of a criminal agreement and of each defendant’s conscious participation in it.
During the hearing, lawyers also raised objections regarding the reliability of certain witness statements, the admissibility of some recordings, and the statute of limitations. The financial claims brought by the civil parties were likewise disputed.
For Ugo Granata, a former member of BCSM’s supervisory board, lawyers Giuseppe Gerbino and Massimiliano Rosti challenged a reconstruction that, in their view, gives decisive weight to his contacts with Confuorti.
“Confuorti is treated as the dark soul of this trial, and anyone who had contact with him is singled out for conduct that then translates into convictions,” Gerbino argued.
The defense pointed to Granata’s professional career at the Bank of Italy, contrasting it with the portrayal of their client that emerged during the proceedings. “How do you explain him being painted as a bandit in a balaclava?” the lawyer asked.
Knowing or associating with someone, the defense argued, does not by itself prove criminal responsibility. To sustain a charge of participation in a criminal association, further evidence would be needed — evidence capable of proving each individual’s contribution to a shared unlawful project.
Considerable attention was also devoted to the compensation claims. According to the newspaper’s account, nearly 63 million euros in provisional damages are being sought, a figure the defense contested both in terms of proving the actual harm and in terms of linking it to the conduct attributed to the defendants.
According to the lawyers, a distinction must be drawn between any damage potentially stemming from the alleged association and damage tied to the individual offences said to be the association’s objectives — some of which have already been addressed in other trials. On this basis, the defense asked that the civil parties’ claims be rejected.
The lack of any proven agreement was also central to the defense of Marco Mularoni, former deputy director of Banca Cis, represented by lawyers Roberto Brancaleoni and Federico Fabbri Ercolani.
Brancaleoni argued that his client did not take part in the association alleged by the prosecution, pointing to the absence of concrete evidence regarding timing, the people supposedly involved, and the reasons for his alleged participation.
“There’s no ‘when’, no ‘with whom’, and no motive,” he said.
The lawyer explained that the transmission of documentation on financial dealings was part of the bank’s normal operations. He also recalled that Mularoni has already been acquitted in the “500” proceedings, concerning transactions involving Demeter securities.
For the defense, professional duties and signatures on documents cannot, by themselves, serve as proof of participation in a criminal group: what must be demonstrated is awareness and willingness to contribute to an unlawful scheme.
The next hearing is scheduled for 5 November, when the defense teams will continue presenting their arguments.
