We can call this a lie. You are seemingly "forgetting" that Mignini and Giuttari were proven innocent of the main charge (allegedly having forged the voice recording of a conversation) already in the first instance, the their conviction on remaining charges was annulled, not because of time limitation - which would be legally impossible, time limits at that stage only effect the penal consequence but not the civil and disciplinary ones nor the fact finding - but it was annulled because their whole prosecution was performed by an illegitimate authority, given that the Florentine magistrates prosecuting him and the offended parties were the same people. So not only the conviction, but the entire case, including the indictment and even the investigation was annulled. The investigation file, basically blank, was sent to Turin. Only at that point the time limitations enter into play, because Turin prosecution office won't start an investigation from scratch on hypothetical charges that have expired even theoretically and are no longer prosecutable.