“Taking of goods in any case is punishable. Under existing rules, if the amount taken is below a certain level, the problem should not be resolved in court. This is a very special case; it is a question of a hungry homeless man.”
“According to rules, in theory, if a homeless man asks for help the supermarket must give him something. This person should inform about his needs openly. This also applies to restaurants. You see, in this situation, main role is played by famine factor.”
According to Fabrizio the man still committed a crime because he stole food from the store.
If a similar situation had occurred in his department store, Fabrizio said, “If a person can pay for the goods- he has to pay. This man wanted to pay for part of the goods, right? In the same way, I probably would not prosecute that person. But if someone took a bag of expensive cheese Parmigiano Reggiano in that case he should be immediately arrested.
Fabrizio noted that there have been theft cases in his own store. “It all depends on the conscience of each one of us. It is a decision of the store personnel who were present at that moment when the incident occurs. If you see that in front of you is a poor hungry man, then let it go.”
“If a person can pay, he has to pay. Court in Italy for such petty amounts does not even begin proceedings. In the case of the supermarket in Genoa it was just 4 euros.”
The store manager further said that in his store such incidents occur very often, almost daily. According to him it doesn’t really matter who steals whether they are immigrants, Italians or pensioners.
“If they steal just some sausages we close our eyes to that. But when the person gathers products for lavish dinner such as fish, prawns and so on that becomes a different story altogether,” Fabrizio said.
In 2015, the trial court declared Roman Ostryakov guilty of theft and sentenced him to six months in prison and a fine of € 100. He appealed against the verdict, saying that it was instead an attempted theft as he was caught before he left the store.
The Italian Court of Appeal empathized with the poor man completely and declared him not guilty. They ruled that Ostryakov acted "out of imminent need of sustenance" and that “he had to take only a small amount of food to satisfy his hunger,” Italian news website rainews.it reported.
