Italian criminal justice does not map neatly onto common-law categories. This page collects, in plain English, the institutions and terms that recur across our investigations. It is a reader’s aid, not legal advice; where a term has no exact English equivalent, we say so.
Courts and judges
Court of Assize (Corte d’Assise) — the court that tries the gravest offences (murder, disaster, poisoning of water). It sits as a panel of two professional judges and six lay judges. The judgment in the Miteni case was delivered by the Vicenza Court of Assize.
Court of Appeal (Corte d’Appello) — the second-instance court, which can re-examine both the facts and the law.
Court of Cassation (Corte di Cassazione) — Italy’s supreme court for criminal and civil matters. It reviews questions of law only, not the facts. Its “Joint Chambers” (Sezioni Unite) resolve conflicts between its own sections and set the most authoritative precedents.
First-instance judgment — in Italy a conviction becomes final (giudicato) only after the routes of appeal are exhausted, typically appeal and then Cassation. Until then the defendant is presumed innocent. This is why we always say at which stage a case stands.
Judge for preliminary investigations (GIP) — the judge who oversees the investigation phase: warrants, seizures, and the decision to dismiss or send a case forward.
Prosecution and procedure
Public Prosecutor’s Office (Procura della Repubblica) — the prosecution service. Italian prosecutors are career magistrates, independent of the executive, and prosecution is in principle mandatory: a prosecutor who receives notice of an offence must investigate it.
Dismissal (archiviazione) — the closing of an investigation without charges, authorised by a judge at the prosecutor’s request. A dismissal is not an acquittal: no trial has taken place.
Civil party (parte civile) — a victim who joins the criminal trial to claim damages within it. Italian criminal trials can thus award compensation directly, without a separate civil suit.
Statute of limitations (prescrizione) — the lapse of time after which an offence can no longer be punished. In complex corporate trials it routinely extinguishes charges before a final judgment: when we write that a count was “declared time-barred”, this is what happened.
Complicity (Art. 110 of the Criminal Code) — the rule under which anyone who contributes to an offence answers for it, without any requirement of being at the scene. It is the legal basis of the question this site asks about principals who stand behind a perpetrator.
Dolus eventualis — a form of intent recognised by Italian case law: the agent foresees the harmful event as a concrete possibility and accepts it as a price of the result pursued. Stronger than recklessness, weaker than purpose; central to the Miteni judgment.
Corporate liability
Decree 231 (Legislative Decree 231/2001) — the statute under which a company itself, and not only its managers, can be held liable before the criminal judge for offences committed in its interest. Formally “administrative” liability, tried with criminal-trial guarantees.
Organisational model (“231 model”) — the compliance programme a company may adopt to prevent offences; if adopted and effectively implemented before the offence, it can exonerate the company.
Supervisory Body (Organismo di Vigilanza, OdV) — the internal body that must watch over the model’s functioning. An Italian invention with no exact counterpart abroad; our 231 series examines how it works in practice.
Predicate offence (reato presupposto) — an offence in the Decree 231 catalogue which, when committed by a company’s people, can trigger the company’s own liability.
Institutions and history
CSM (Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura) — the Superior Council of the Magistracy, the self-governing body of Italian judges and prosecutors: it appoints, promotes and disciplines them.
P2 (Propaganda Due) — the secret masonic lodge led by Licio Gelli, exposed in 1981, whose membership reached into politics, the military, intelligence and the press. Banned by law; a parliamentary inquiry described it as a hidden structure of power. The name recurs here because of the “Ungheria” case.
Tangentopoli — “Bribesville”: the system of political corruption uncovered from 1992 by the Milan “Clean Hands” (Mani Pulite) investigations, which brought down the parties that had governed post-war Italy.
ARPA / ARPAV — the regional environmental protection agencies (ARPAV is Veneto’s): the technical bodies that monitor air, water and soil and report violations.
AIA (integrated environmental authorisation) — the permit a plant needs to operate processes with environmental impact, setting the conditions and limits of what it may discharge. The 2014 AIA granted to Miteni, with no limits on the new PFAS, is a turning point of Case No. 1.
SIN (site of national interest) — a contaminated site formally designated by the State as requiring remediation under national direction. Designation triggers duties and funding; its absence, at Trissino and Spinetta, is part of our investigation.
Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry — a committee of Parliament with the powers of the judiciary to investigate matters of public interest. Its hearings and reports are public documents, and we cite them as such.
Words we keep in Italian
Garantismo — the zeal for due-process guarantees. A noble principle, and a word that recurs in Italian public debate; our counter-manifesto examines its one-way use — awake when power is in the dock, asleep the rest of the time.
Avvocato (Avv.) — the Italian courtesy title for a lawyer, which you will meet in our documents before the name of Luca Santa Maria, the guarantor of these pages.
“Ungheria” — Italian for “Hungary”: the code name of the alleged secret association, heir to P2, at the centre of Case No. 2. A proper name, which we do not translate.
This glossary will grow with the investigations. If a term you met on these pages is missing, write to us: info@whitecollarcrimes.it.