She was considered an anti-mafia principal, head teacher of the school named after Judge Falcone, in the Zen district of Palermo, but now she has been arrested by the Carabinieri on charges of embezzlement and corruption, and is under house arrest. Daniela Lo Verde - who in 2020 became Knight of Merit of the Republic "for the commitment shown during the pandemic" - according to the accusations, supported by interceptions, would have appropriated, with the complicity of the vice principal Daniele Agosta, also arrested, food for the school canteen, computers, tablets and iphones for pupils and purchased with European funding.
In 14 months of investigation, the European Public Prosecutor's Office would have ascertained the irregular management of EU public spending funds, allocated to various school projects.
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Carabinieri
Everything starts from the complaint of a teacher
The investigation that today led to the arrest of the manager stems from the complaint to the carabinieri of a former teacher of the institute who told the investigators of a "despotic management of public affairs by the suspect", writes in the order the judge who ordered the house arrest for the woman, management that was impossible to counteract except run the risk of retaliation.
The teacher described the director as "accustomed to violating the rules": from those on the health emergency to those of European funding. The school projects, all approved unanimously, according to the woman who turned to the military of the Arma, were not implemented diligently and among the teachers it was frequent the practice of collecting ex post, and not during the course of the activities, the signatures of the boys involved. This is because in the projects entrusted to the Falcone school in reality the students did not participate or participated in a small number and depending on the number of participating students the amount of funds received, there was a risk of losing money.
The teacher also revealed that often the bills for the purchases, for example for the gym, were inflated and that only part of the money was spent on teaching tools, while the rest of the money was invested in clothing and shoes for the school management. The statements of the former teacher, confirmed to the Carabinieri by other teachers, started the interceptions.
In August 2022, for the umpteenth time, computers were stolen from the main hall of the Falcone school in Palermo. An episode denounced in the media by the same principal Lo Verde, today arrested together with the vice-principal Agosta. The papers of the investigation tell that the two, not knowing they were intercepted, had shown their satisfaction with how the fact had brought contributions to the school, as reported by Ansa: "For a horned one and a half - said August to the woman - we are getting money from all sides!". And the principal claimed the merit of having made the news public "precisely in order to ride the wave", to advertise even more her character as an upright headmaster on the front line and obtain certificates of esteem, solidarity, but above all money and economic aid from the institutions ", comments the Judge for the preliminary investigations.
"Thank you you have to say .. because no one had known .... you have to say that .. that I am the special one!", he said about the spread of the news, as reported by Ansa. The mayor of Palermo, through the Sicily Foundation, after the facts had in fact assigned to the institute a contribution of about three thousand euros to buy back the stolen equipment.