Piero Fassino Faces No Conviction for Alleged Perfume Theft at Fiumicino Airport

There might not be a conviction in sight for Piero Fassino, a parliamentarian and former minister, who is accused of stealing a perfume (a bottle of Chanel worth 130 euros) from a duty-free shop at Fiumicino airport. A preliminary report will arrive at the Prosecutor's Office in the next few hours. The Polaria investigators have collected all the elements - including images recorded by the surveillance camera system - and will transmit them to the competent judicial authority, that of Civitavecchia, which will evaluate how to proceed. Fassino, as a parliamentarian, has not been heard but - investigative sources explain - if he wishes, he can make spontaneous statements. Already yesterday, the PD deputy - a parliamentarian for 7 legislatures, former Minister of Justice from 2000 to 2001, then Democratic Party secretary until 2007 and Mayor of Turin for five years from 2011 to 2016 - provided his version stating that he had already clarified the matter with the duty-free managers: 'I wanted to buy the perfume for my wife, but having the trolley in one hand and the cellphone in the other, not yet having three hands, I simply placed the perfume package in the pocket of my coat, waiting to go to the cash register'. At that moment, he added, 'a security officer approached me and contested that act by reporting it to a police officer. Certainly, I did not intend to misappropriate a small bottle of perfume'. Fassino also claimed that he immediately offered to pay for it and to buy not one but two bottles, just to prove his good faith, but the managers decided to file a complaint anyway. The PD parliamentarian, after the solidarity expressed yesterday by the Forza Italia deputy Ugo Cappellacci, received the support of the coordinator of Brothers of Italy in Piedmont, Fabrizio Comba. 'I know the man and the upright politician, the media meat grinder he was thrown into is indecent for his personal history and, therefore, also for the history of our country. He is a political opponent - Comba concluded - but that does not allow me to doubt his integrity, convinced of his extraordinary moral qualities'. The crime in question is theft, governed by Article 624 of the penal code according to which 'whoever takes possession of someone else's movable property, removing it from the person who holds it, with the intention of profiting from it for himself or for others, is punished with imprisonment from six months to three years and with a fine from 154 euros to 516 euros'. In reality, by virtue of the triviality of the fact, Fassino could be acquitted thus avoiding conviction.