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Defamation, stalking, slander. The De Cecco cases

November 30, 2024

163

The black knight Filippo Antonio De Cecco – awaiting summary trial at the Court of Chieti for commercial fraud on the origin of 4.575 tons of French wheat registered as Italian (1) – is the protagonist of two other legal cases, for the crimes of threats, stalking, slander and defamation, which he reported to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pescara.

The accusations, in these two cases, are directed against the writer, for daring to delve into the first judicial affair, which the Il Fatto Quotidiano had already made public. (2) And it had meanwhile led to the forced indictment of Filippo Antonio De Cecco, by the GIP of Chieti, for a trade fraud on a total of 35.000 tons of wheat (3,4,5).

Table of Contents

1) De Cecco – Dongo. Case 1

347 pages of file – with no investigative act, other than the verification of the ownership of the site GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade)– are dedicated to a wide-ranging complaint-suit against the writer, in relation to the two articles:

– ‘Filippo Antonio De Cecco’s film, preview’ (6)

– ‘spaghetti western all’abruzzese. Mr. De Cecco’s pastatrac’. (7)

Both articles, beyond any evaluation that will be up to the judiciary, also report facts already exposed in various other newspapers. In addition to details confirmed in specific documents attached to the complaint itself.

1.1) Stalking, or ‘persecutory acts’

Filippo Antonio DeCecco extended the above complaint-complaint, against the writer, to the crime of stalking. A unique case, probably, against a journalist.

The stalking crime, or ‘stalking’ punishes those who, ‘with repeated conduct:

– threatens or harasses someone in such a way as to cause a persistent and serious state of anxiety or fear or

– to generate a well-founded fear for one’s own safety or that of a close relative or of a person linked to the same by an emotional relationship or

– to force him to change his lifestyle’. (8)

The ‘stalking acts’ of the writer, in the imaginative hypothesis of Filippo Antonio De Cecco and his verbose lawyers, would have been committed through the publication of the two aforementioned articles.

1.2) Pescara – Rome, a burning issue

The complaint-report was filed by Filippo Antonio De Cecco at the Court of Pescara, although the writer is based about 200 km away. The case began to get hot, however, after:

– the writer published news of a public prosecutor from Pescara who was in charge of an investigation where Filippo Antonio De Cecco was the injured party and had celebrated the baptism of his daughter in the starred restaurant owned by the latter; (9)

– the public prosecutor, then in charge of the investigation in question, asked for and obtained the abstention. And only after this event did the Pescara Prosecutor’s Office detect its territorial incompetence.

In Rome, the deputy prosecutor on duty sent the writer to trial (for the crime of defamation only, not also for stalking) without even paying attention to the notification of a notice of guarantee. The Preliminary Hearing Judge will rule in April 2025.

2) De Cecco – Dongo. Case 2

The second complaint by Filippo Antonio De Cecco against the undersigned was in turn presented, as expected, to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pescara. In this regard, the news already published on this site – as well as in the investigation documents, and never denied by anyone – regarding:

– a generous gift from Filippo Antonio De Cecco to the then vice president of the CSM Giovanni Legnini;

– the assignment of an executive level internship at De Cecco to Giovanni Legnini’s newly graduated nephew;

– the influence of Giovanni Legnini on the appointments of the top management of the Pescara Tribunal and Prosecutor’s Office, revealed by Luca Palamara;

– the hiring in De Cecco of the husband of the then deputy prosecutor of Pescara, Anna Maria Mantini;

– the statements of Filippo De Cecco on his influence on the Court and the Prosecutor’s Office of Pescara, as well as that of Chieti. (10)

2.1) Moral complicity in slander

Six anonymous reports were sent between March and August 2022 – via packages sent by post from Rome Fiumicino and/or its airport, to a multitude of recipients, including the undersigned – throughout Italy. Judiciary, supervisory bodies, credit institutions, public and private entities, press and television, from Bolzano to Catanzaro.

Although the anonymous complaints were sent from Rome Fiumicino and from there throughout Italy, the investigation took root right in the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pescara. Which also claimed territorial jurisdiction at the Review Court at the same location, when called upon to express an opinion on the legitimacy of the measures adopted against the undersigned (see the next paragraph).

The undersigned was accused of ‘moral complicity in slander’, as well as defamation and threats, since some of his articles published under his signature on his GIFT site were reprinted, with textual citation of their titles, in the (subsequent) complaints by anonymous people. Without any indication of the hypothetical participation in the drafting of anonymous reports full of personal details about people unknown to the writer.

2.2) Private investigations by former Mossad agents

A private investigation agency boasting the participation of former Mossad agents (Israeli intelligence service, ed.) was hired by Filippo Antonio De Cecco in an attempt to identify any illicit or unethical conduct in the writer’s life, as well as to try to eliminate his sources of information.

Private investigators – falsely posing as British advisers to an international investor – commissioned the writer, as a strategy expert, to prepare a due diligence report on F.lli De Cecco di Filippo SpA. With attention to various critical issues which also include the mater of trade fraud. (11)

The report by ex-Mossad investigators – who recorded hours of conversations, as part of online and even physical meetings, in Madrid – was then ‘tailored’ to fit De Cecco’s accusatory hypothesis. To infer, without any evidence:

– the opinion of an Israeli private investigator based in London according to which there would be a ‘familiarity’ of the writer with anonymous writings

– which in fact begin with the timely reference to the articles published by the writer. Moral complicity in slander or crime of opinion?

2.3) Home search and seizures

The obsession of Filippo Antonio De Cecco and his lawyers, Marco Spagnuolo and Marco Femminella, is to trace the sources of the news published by the writer. Both complaints for defamation and stalking as well as for calumny were in fact accompanied by ferocious requests for the seizure of all computers and cell phones used by the writer. And these requests were accepted, coincidentally, by the Pescara Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The writer, a member of the Rome Order of Journalists for twenty years, thus underwent a six-hour search of his home-office and subsequent seizure of all computer devices in his possession (cell phone, tablet and laptop). In execution of the decree of 11 July 2023 signed by the deputy prosecutor Fabiana Rapino and the public prosecutor at the Court of Pescara Giuseppe Bellelli.

2.4) Theft of personal and professional data

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pescara, following the seizure of all the writer’s computer devices, has therefore:

– ordered the extraction of a ‘forensic copy’ of all the files contained therein, without any selection of only the documents that could have had any relation to the facts under investigation. In contempt of the consolidated jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation and the European Court of Human Rights, which impose strict compliance with the principles of proportionality, privacy, freedom of expression;

– authorized the technical consultant of the Pescara Public Prosecutor’s Office to use a very expensive hacker program, provided by the same complainant De Cecco, to extract all the data contained in the computer and the tablet of the writer. A program so effective that it deleted the contents of their hard drives, after the extraction of their copy;

– granted the delivery to the complainant Filippo Antonio De Cecco (who requested it) of a complete copy of all files relating to the writer’s professional, associative and voluntary activities, as well as his personal and family ones. This last measure was cancelled the following day, before being carried out, following a heartfelt request by the writer who would not have otherwise hesitated to report all those responsible for this abomination.

3) Fundamental human rights

Following the seizure of all his computer devices, with extraction of forensic copy of all their contents and deletion of the related hard-disks, the undersigned has presented a series of requests and appeals to the competent judicial authorities. With the following findings:

– Public Prosecutor’s Office and Review Court of Pescara, rejection;

– Court of Cassation, acceptance with referral to the Review Court of Pescara; (12)

– Pescara re-examination, declaration of territorial incompetence, in agreement with the deputy prosecutor (in the opposite direction to the positions already expressed by both in the decision censured by the Supreme Court);

– Campobasso Prosecutor’s Office, rejection;

– Campobasso Court, Review Section, accepted. (13)

At 17 months after an unlawful seizure and 1 month after its declaration of nullity, despite further requests to the Pescara Public Prosecutor’s Office, the undersigned is still waiting for the return of all the files recorded in his existence. Which include sensitive data of his own and of third parties, as well as work documents.

4) Provisional conclusions

Freedom of expression in Italy is seriously threatened by events such as those described above. To which is added the indifference of various substitute prosecutors, who indulge in proposing referrals to trial on the sole basis of the accusation hypotheses. (14) Without any attention to those human rights that are fundamental to the very existence of democracy.

They would do well, those investigating magistrates, to remember when lawyers of large corporations fired off a barrage of complaints against their colleagues of the Mani Pulite pool, with equally intimidating purposes. They would also do well to investigate the much more serious facts that are described with precision by independent authors, instead of just passing the papers for ‘defamation’ (15,16).

#Equality #VanghePulite

Dario Dongo

Footnotes

(1) De Cecco, the Abruzzese pasta on trial for commercial fraud. The new Molise. 2.10.24 https://tinyurl.com/5s9zwbtu

(2) Nicola Borzi. De Cecco, French wheat passed off as Apulian: top management investigated for fraud. Il Fatto Quotidiano. 11/15/20 https://tinyurl.com/yykuum49

(3) Dario Dongo. Filippo Antonio De Cecco, forced indictment for commercial fraud. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 28.1.22

(4) Dario Dongo. Filippo Antonio De Cecco, indicted for commercial fraud. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 28.7.22

(5) Dario Dongo. Filippo Antonio De Cecco on trial for fraud on the origin of the wheat in the pasta. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 5.5.23

(6) Dario Dongo. Western spaghetti Abruzzo style. Filippo Antonio De Cecco’s film, in preview. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 1.2.21

(7) Dario Dongo. Western spaghetti Abruzzo style. The pastatrac of Mr. De Cecco. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 26.2.21

(8) Criminal Code, Article 612 bis

(9) Dario Dongo. Filippo Antonio De Cecco, new shadows on links with the judiciary, wheat origin and 2020 budget. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 14.11.21

(10) Dario Dongo. Filippo Antonio De Cecco and the mysteries of Italian justice. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 18.8.21

(11) See also Nicola Borzi. Lots of short-term debts and the case of the bond with Popolare Bari. Il Fatto Quotidiano. 18.11.20 https://tinyurl.com/y4y2zchc

(12) Court of Cassation, ruling of 22 February 2024 n. 21089

(13) Campobasso Review Court, order of 28 October 2023

(14) A recent example in the previous article by Dario Dongo. Freedom of the press, our victory over UNAPROL – Coldiretti. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade). 22.11.24

(15) The deputy prosecutor of Chieti, to cite an example, appears to have failed to extend the investigations for commercial fraud, against Filippo Antonio De Cecco, on 30.000 tons of North Dakota wheat as well as on the origin of the semolina purchased from third parties. As instead ordered by the GIP (see paragraph 2.2 of the article cited in note 7)

(16) Another noteworthy case, in the agri-food sector, concerns the suspicion of illicit influence of the assembly of the agricultural consortia merged into CAI SpA. See the article by Dario Dongo. Coldiretti and the financial operation Federconsorzi 2. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade).