The Trapani court sentenced Paolo Ruggirello, the former Sicilian deputy of Pd, to 12 years in prison for foreign competition in a mafia organisation. The prosecution objected to the mafia association and demanded that the politician be sentenced to 20 years in prison. The case stems from the “Scrigno” investigation conducted by Trapani Provincial Command gendarmes in 2019, which took 28 people to prison, including lieutenants and followers of boss Matteo Messina Denaro.
Ruggirello, on Ars’ corporate site (Sicilian district council, ed), company manager. His father in the eighties was also president of Trapani Calcio. He chose politics in the mid-1990s. He switched from the Autonomist Movement of former Sicilian governor Raffaele Lombardo to Article 4 of Lino Leanza, then joined the Democratic Party in 2015. He was elected to the Sicilian Regional Assembly for three legislatures. He ran for the Senate in 2017, but was not elected.
Accused of having the electoral support of Trapani’s “mafia family”, being a reference point for gangs in regional politics, winning contracts for clans and meeting mafia boss Virga several times, Ruggirello said that before the 2017 regional contest, the boss asked him for 50,000 euros in exchange for 1,000 votes, and he simply stopped discussing. He admitted that he had agreed so that he could cut and leave as soon as possible.
Source: Today IT

Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.