The Region hosts NATO at the 'illegal' restaurant and then revokes the concession: the paradox of Mondello

NATO was hosted by the Region in a restaurant that the Region itself later defined as illegal: this is the bizarre conclusion reached by reading the documents that the regional administration presented to revoke the concession to the company Immobiliare Italo Belga.

With a sort of bureaucratic split personality, in autumn 2025, it was possible for regional offices to work simultaneously on the revocation of the Mondello concession, citing among the reasons a restaurant whose permits, according to the Region's interpretation, had expired a couple of years ago, and to pay the same restaurant to hold an institutional event with eighty guests, including international figures and security institutions.

This period is when the storm surrounding the company Italo Belga, which has held the largest beach concession concerning Mondello for over a century, intensifies due to the raids by regional deputy Ismaele La Vardera against the presence of turnstiles and fences. Following this, news emerged about the owner of one of the companies that had worked for Italo Belga, Gm Edil, a relative of the mafia boss Bartolo Genova.

Throughout October and November, investigations by the anti-mafia commission of the Ars and interventions by the prefecture follow, which in mid-November issues an anti-mafia interdiction against Gm Edil.

In the wake of the revelations of those days, the Region gets to work, and on November 18, four days after the prefect's interdiction, it initiates the revocation procedure for the Italo Belga concession. This procedure concludes at the end of February with a revocation decree from the Department of Territory, which alongside the Gm Edil case also cites another alleged infraction by the company, this time concerning Mida. The company has an agreement with Italo Belga to manage a catering service within the concession, and the Region's accusation is that despite its expiration in December 2023, Mida continued its activities for two years, including that of the restaurant “Alle Terrazze” in the ancient bathing establishment.

In the revocation document, the general director of the Environment department, Calogero Beringheli, summarizes the steps, emphasizing that to reassign the catering service to Mida, the company Italo Belga would have had to submit a request to the Region, from which it should have received "express and not tacit authorization". Therefore, since the authorization had expired and Mida continued to operate in 2024 and 2025, "the trust element no longer appears to exist" regarding Italo Belga. Outside the bureaucratic language of the offices: you allowed a restaurant to operate without asking us for authorization, and for this reason, we must revoke your concession.

In the same days, therefore, in which one hand of the Region accuses Italo Belga of having accepted an illegal situation, however, another hand organizes representative dinners right in the same restaurant “without authorization”.

At the end of October, the members of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly arrive in Palermo and spend two days at the Ars for institutional meetings and studies on security in the Mediterranean. On October 28, the Ceremonial Department of Palazzo d’Orleans decides to host a dinner for 80 people among NATO delegates and representatives of institutions, taking them to Terrazze, the restaurant managed by Mida. Total cost €6,600, for an evening that would have been prepared with several days of inspections, area clean-ups, requests for authorizations, and document checks, given the importance of the guests.

Everything in order, to the point that on November 28, the presidency of the Region decrees to process the payment for the dinner to Mida. Exactly ten days have passed since the same Region initiated the revocation procedure also due to that restaurant.

The meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, as prestigious as it is, is not even the only one in which the restaurant “Alle Terrazze” has been used for dinners and events over the past two years. In December 2024, the gala dinner of the second edition of the Giuseppe Alessi Award takes place at the restaurant, 120 people for €12,000, while in January 2025, an institutional dinner occurs among the heads of the Presidency offices and the governor Renato Schifani himself.

In both cases, these are events during the period when the restaurant was, according to the Region itself, without permits. That is, illegal.