Prosecutors seek arrest of Coima boss and others in Milan property planning probe

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By Emilio Parodi

MILAN (Reuters) -Prosecutors on Wednesday sought the arrest of Milan’s councillor for urban planning, the head of real estate firm Coima and four others as part of investigations into planning permits that have led to a construction freeze in Italy’s financial capital.

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.

Manfredi Catella, founder of Coima, one of Italy’s biggest developers, and Giancarlo Tancredi, a member of the Milan city council, are under investigation for bribery, according to the summons to a preliminary questioning reviewed by Reuters.

The pair, along with the other four people, will have to appear on July 23 before a judge, who will decide whether to arrest them or not.

In a statement, Catella said Coima promptly provided to the authorities what has been requested of so far and it carried out internal checks to confirm it had acted properly.

“We will be able to represent it with clarity in the courts,” he said.

Spokespeople for Tancredi and for the Milan municipality declined to comment.

A statement from the Milan Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday said Guardia di Finanza police at the same time carried out “24 personal and home searches” on as many people suspected of “corruption and forgery”. It did not give further detail.

According to the latest prosecutor’s documents, award-winning architect Stefano Boeri was also named among those under investigation.

A lawyer representing Boeri did not reply to a request for comment emailed by Reuters.

According to the court documents, prosecutors said investigations related to the largest urban planning projects in Milan, “have brought to light a ‘system’….whose purpose is to facilitate the issuance of illegal building permits and to carry out highly speculative real estate transactions”.

In February, Boeri, best known for his “Bosco Verticale” (Vertical Forest) apartment project in the city, was banned from working with the public administration by a judge in connection with another urban planning probe.

(Reporting by Emilio Parodi and Claudia Cristoferi, additional reporting by Elvira Pollina; Editing by Keith Weir and Barbara Lewis)