The university is grappling with the changes to the Statute necessary to elect the successor to the rector Franco Cuccurullo.
As it will be recalled, the entrepreneur Tullio Raimondo Faiella – reported to the Public Prosecutor's Office by Cuccurullo himself – directly requested the outgoing Rector to repay the alleged bribes which he allegedly paid to the researchers of the D'Annunzio Foundation for the experimentation of a drug.
The reconstruction of the facts is very complicated and there is no proof. The only document is the same denunciation of the rector who claims to have suffered an attempted extortion.
The request of the owner of Farmaceutici TS would have arisen due to the rejection of one of his products by Aifa, the drug agency that oversees the regularity of medicines on the market. Therefore, according to the entrepreneur, the fault of the failure should be attributed to the University Foundation: consequently the money he spent should be returned, both official and undeclared. The matter falls within the competence of the prosecution and deserves to be clarified.
And there are those who speak of power games, of selling off d'Annunzio to academic forces outside Abruzzo, of "Samson dying with all the Philistines" attributed to the expiring rector, of a revenge against the Roman university power which in the past would have sterilized an initiative by Cuccurullo himself.
Rumors circulating insistently in the University and which, as mentioned, have overheated an already tense climate.
Others, however, refer to the judicial curriculum vitae of the Neapolitan entrepreneur denounced to raise some doubts about the dynamics of the facts, which would clean up all conspiracy theories: in the past, the owner of Farmaceutici TS was denounced for millionaire scams against the National Health System through the comparison with doctors and pharmacists, who were rewarded with money and prostitutes.
In Chieti there would have been only bribes, it would be Faiella's version: 92 thousand euros in three parts: 50 thousand, 25 thousand and 17 thousand euros given to researchers, according to the levels of importance in the experimentation. However, the researchers involved have already turned to lawyers to protect themselves and avoid negative effects on their names. Meanwhile, they have declared themselves completely extraneous to the facts as they were narrated by the entrepreneur to the rector: «you have to give me – Faiella allegedly said – not only the 20,000 euros plus VAT of the contract for the failed experimentation, but also the other expenses».
The request, already informal by its nature (the Foundation in fact carries out the research, studies the active ingredient, but does not guarantee the authorization by Aifa) was seasoned with some details of these additional expenses: it was not a question of holidays in boat or congress sponsorship, but
