Milan-Cortina 2026, hearing on 5 May on match-fixing and Foundation status

Milan, 5 February (LaPresse) – The date of the hearing before the Constitutional Court has been set for 5 May 2026. The Court will examine the constitutional “legitimacy” of the “Save the Olympics” decree law of 11 June 2024 (converted in August of the same year), The law was passed one month after the first searches were carried out by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of an investigation into corruption and bid rigging in the tenders of the Winter Olympic Games organising body, and established that the Foundation operates “under private law”. This law effectively “sterilised” the charges brought by public prosecutors Francesco Cajani, Alessandro Gobbis and the public administration department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office headed by Deputy Prosecutor Paolo Ielo, preventing them from prosecuting offences against the public administration. The issue to be resolved by the Constitutional Court, three months after the end of the Olympic Games, was raised by Milan magistrate Patrizia Nobile, to whom the prosecutors had turned. Last November, the judge wrote that this would be a rule “in violation” of EU Directive 2014/24 on public procurement and the UN Merida Convention against corruption, ratified by Italy in 2009, which created an “unreasonable free zone for employees” of the Foundation who, “despite the public interest” called upon to manage and the “economic parachute” on the Winter Olympics due to the financial “public guarantees” of the state, regions and local authorities “enjoy substantial ‘immunity”, according to the 53-page order. The rule was ‘drafted ad hoc for the Foundation’, whose lawyers will be able to participate in the hearing before the Constitutional Court to support their case (unlike the public prosecutors) and which is ‘constitutionally illegitimate’ because it violates the ‘constraints deriving from EU law’, “international obligations” and creating a regime different from that to which workers in “any other central and sub-central public administration” are subject, it conflicts with Articles 3, 11 and 117 of the Constitution. According to the investigating magistrate, the public committee organising the Games was “removed” from the rules on “public administration bargaining” during “criminal proceedings” and “immediately after the discovery made by the public prosecutor” who had filed the documents for review.