MILAN (Reuters) -A Milan court freed a city councillor and two other local figures who had been placed under house arrest for alleged fast-tracking of planning permits, as part of investigations that have led to a construction freeze in Italy’s financial capital.
According to a closed-door ruling issued late on Thursday and reviewed by Reuters, an appeals court commuted the three arrests to one-year bans on professional activity and in dealing with government offices.
Giancarlo Tancredi, a member of the Milan city council, resigned from his post after the prosecutor’s office filed requests for his arrest on July 16. His lawyer did not reply to a request from Reuters for comment about the latest court decision.
Tancredi and five others involved in the alleged scandal had been arrested on July 31. They all are still under investigation and deny any wrongdoing.
The appeals court previously released on August 12 two other suspects in the investigation, a builder and an architect, without imposing any other restrictive measures.
The court is expected on August 20 to examine the appeal of the sixth suspect, the head of real estate firm Coima, who is currently under house arrest.
Coima, one of Italy’s biggest developers, issued a statement “taking note” of the measure against its founder Manfredi Catella, and said that, in response, the powers of other board members had been expanded to ensure business continuity.
The Milan property market began booming in 2015, when the Expo international exhibition helped to transform the city into a hot spot for developers from Italy and abroad.
But complaints from local residents objecting to a sharp increase in multi-storey buildings triggered investigations into alleged abuses in the fast-tracking of building permits, stalling construction activity.
(Reporting by Emilio Parodi, editing by Joshua McElwee, William Maclean)
