Case of a Political Foundation and WhatsApp Messages: The Decision by the Court of Florence

1. The fact

   The criminal proceeding concluded definitively in April 2025, following the judgment of no grounds to proceed for all eleven suspects issued by the Preliminary Hearing Judge (GUP) of the Court of Florence on December 19, 2024. The case originates from investigations into a well-known political foundation, in which the Prosecution alleged crimes of illicit party financing and corruption. According to reports, investigators proceeded in 2019 to seize smartphones and computers from non-parliamentary witnesses and co-defendants, acquiring thousands of messages exchanged with well-known political figures who were members of Parliament at the time. The Prosecution long maintained that these messages, having already been sent and received (and thus no longer «in transit»), constituted mere digital documents acquirable without special formalities. However, the defendants' lawyers objected to the violation of constitutional guarantees, as no prior authorization had been requested from the relevant Chambers. The judge upheld this objection, ordering the removal of all unauthorized chats from the case file, declaring them affected by pathological unusability, an element that led to the definitive dismissal.

2. 

   The rules at play

   The core of the issue is Art. 68, paragraph 3, of the Constitution, which requires the authorization of the relevant Chamber to subject a member of Parliament to the seizure of correspondence.

   1. Law No. 140/2003, in Art. 4, specifies the methods for such a request, extending protection to every form of communication by the MP.
   2. Art. 254 of the Code of Criminal Procedure regulates the seizure of correspondence from third parties but must be read in harmony with constitutional prerogatives when the interlocutor is an elected official.
   3. Art. 234 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, invoked by the prosecution, concerns documentary evidence, but recent jurisprudence has limited its application to files that do not contain current or historical communication flows between identified persons. The violation of these rules does not result in a simple irregularity but in the unusability of the evidence in the trial. This means that illegally acquired material cannot be shown to witnesses, nor used by the judge to justify the verdict. The purpose of the rule is not to protect the politician as an individual, but to guarantee the freedom of parliamentary functions from possible improper interference by the judicial power.

3. What the jurisprudence says

   The orientation of the supreme and constitutional courts has undergone a decisive evolution. For years, it was believed that a message already stored in a phone's memory had lost its character as «correspondence» to become static data. However, the Constitutional Court has clarified that the concept of correspondence includes every exchange of thought between two or more specific people, regardless of the technical medium or whether the transmission is completed.

   1. The principle of third-party involvement dictates that if the investigation aims to access an MP's communications, authorization is necessary even if the seizure occurs on a third party's device.
   2. The judges emphasized that Art. 68 of the Constitution cannot be bypassed by qualifying messages as documents.
   3. Jurisprudence has specified that protection also covers electronic correspondence (emails and WhatsApp) as an expression of the freedom and secrecy of communications guaranteed by Art. 15 of the Constitution.

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8. What it teaches professionals

   The evolution of this case offers fundamental operational lessons for the criminal lawyer.

   1. It is necessary to always verify the identity of all interlocutors in seized chats, as the presence of an MP immediately activates the shield of Art. 68 of the Constitution.
   2. The defense must promptly challenge the qualification of files as documents, arguing for their nature as digital correspondence according to the most recent approaches of the Constitutional Court.
   3. It is necessary to monitor the chain of custody of digital data to object to any attempts to bypass authorizations through acquisitions from target third parties of convenience.
   4. Mastery of the conflict of attribution between state powers becomes a defensive tool that is no longer exceptional but integrated into the trial strategy.

9. Update and rectification note (17 September 2026)

   The previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the proceeding was in the trial phase, mentioned the alleged crime of money laundering, and cited the names of the suspects and the foundation without the support of verifiable primary sources. The text has been corrected to reflect the actual outcome: on 19 December 2024, the Preliminary Hearing Judge (GUP) of the Court of Florence issued a judgment of no grounds to proceed for all suspects, which became definitive in April 2025. In the absence of retrievable judicial documents, the names of the parties involved have been anonymized in compliance with editorial rules.

References: Articolo 68 CostituzioneArticolo 15 CostituzioneLegge 20 giugno 2003 n. 140Articolo 254 Codice di Procedura PenaleArticolo 234 Codice di Procedura PenaleGiurisprudenza della Corte Costituzionale

Editorial oversight: Avv. Federico Papa·ICAMUpdated 17 September 2026Content drafted with AI support and subject to editorial source checks. Despite these controls, inaccuracies may remain: reports and rectification requests are welcome. Report a correction