Modica Faces Separate Financial Matters as Guardia di Finanza Reviews Records
A document acquisition by the Guardia di Finanza, a regional funding dispute and a council interrogation concern the same Sicilian town but are not presented as formally linked.
Guardia di Finanza officers have acquired documents at Modica's Palazzo San Domenico in connection with €977,000 that reporting from the Sicilian town links to advances paid by the Ministry of the Interior to the municipality in 2020, when Ignazio Abbate was mayor. The sum relates to five separate financing streams, worth about €5 million in total, behind five publicly funded works for hydrogeological risk mitigation. According to the same account, an accounting anomaly recurs in nearly identical form across the five measures, characterised in that reporting as a "duplication of spending capacity".
Separately, a political dispute has opened between Modica's Partito Democratico and Abbate, by then a regional parliamentarian, over funding the PD says the city failed to obtain. Nello Dipasquale, a PD member of the Sicilian regional assembly, put the missing resources at about €4.5 million. Amendments he and fellow PD deputies tabled at the ARS were rejected in Palermo with a contrary vote that the PD attributes, among others, to Abbate. The city PD secretary, Francesco Stornello, and the municipal councillor Giovanni Spadaro directed their criticism at Abbate. The amendments sought targeted funds for four strategic interventions on Modica's territory, plus an additional roadwork. The dispute was reported on 30 September 2026.
A third, distinct matter concerns the municipality's financial administration. Councillors Claudio Gugliotta of Castello Sindaca, Margherita Cascino and Giorgio Civello of Voce Libera have filed an urgent council interrogation addressed to the council president, Maria Cristina Minardo, the mayor, Maria Monisteri Caschetto, and the competent assessor, seeking immediate clarification on the state of the Ipotesi di Bilancio Stabilmente Riequilibrato. Modica declared dissesto finanziario on 30 January 2025. On 5 June 2025 a decree of the President of the Republic appointed the straordinaria liquidation commission. The interrogation was reported on 1 October 2026.
The reporting does not present the three matters as formally linked. Each of the three articles reviewed is published in truncated form, so the published excerpts do not record an outcome in any of the strands, a response from the mayor, the council president or the assessor, a subsequent procedural step in the liquidation process, or a further parliamentary step in the funding dispute. No next step is specified in the excerpts reviewed.