The next time Di Bella calls he says he wants to meet somewhere new. Not the usual bar. Not at home. He decides on a shopping mall. ‘We need a change of scene,’ he explains. ‘We need to go to a brand-new place, where the shops and bars have only just been opened. Where we’ve never been and nobody knows us.’
He summons us to a bar in a big Auchan mall on the outskirts of a Lombard town. The directions are precise. But three times we take a wrong turning. It’s the agitation – indeed the fear – because all the precautions he imposes on us make us suspicious. So far everything has gone smoothly, and we’ve discussed some cases linked to famous names. But if Di Bella calls us four times from three different numbers there must be some problem. What is he afraid of? Does he think he’s being followed?
The car park outside the bar is half-deserted. Had it been full we would at least have had an excuse to drive around in search of a spot and play for time. This way there can be none of that. Di Bella is already there, sitting at one of the three paltry tables outside the bar. His son is with him. Good. It’s a good sign. Maybe. We exchange greetings, and the boy, silent as always, gets up and heads for a games arcade. Pippo is tense. We are tenser. His voice is hoarse and more monotonous than on other days.
‘Are you OK?’ he begins. We are, though maybe we’d rather be somewhere else. ‘I told you to come here because it’s quieter. I have to talk to you about some delicate matters. I want to explain to you how the ’Ndrangheta plays politics. You think: “OK, the politicians do a bit of conniving.” You’re wrong: it’s the clans that run politics. They are active; the others, the professional politicians, are only passive. They decide things that the ’Ndrangheta couldn’t care less about; if they do any different they’re in trouble.
‘I wanted you to come here because we need to look each other in the eye. When a state witness talks about the wheeling and dealing that goes on in Parliament, in the regional authorities and in local councils great and small, he has to be prepared to be attacked and discredited. They make you out to be a traitor twice over. I’ve decided: I’m going to talk. I owe it to my wife and my son. But I want to know, and you must tell me straight out because there’s no going back, if you’re ready. I need to know whether you’re men of honour or whether you’ll say yes and then dump me, or get me to tell you all I know and then not write anything.’
We can’t quite tell if what we see in Di Bella’s eyes is defiance or passion. But he doesn’t even let us speak. He has already decided. The book goes on. And the story moves on – to Franco Coco Trovato’s campaign to take over Brianza in the late 1980s. And he has some disturbing details to add to what was laid before the court during Trovato’s trial.1
•
Perhaps surprisingly, the fact that Franco Coco Trovato was the ’Ndrangheta boss in Lecco was not widely known. The whole town should have known, but they didn’t. At least not until 1992, when the big round-up of the Trovato gang saw Franco landed in prison for the rest of his life, serving seven life sentences. But before that how could anyone have thought that a man who owned several successful restaurants and drove around in a Ferrari was a mobster? How could a person who had been given the Order of the Knights of Bethlehem by the local tradesmen’s association be a mafioso? And it was not only Franco who was honoured in this way. His brother-in-law Vincenzo Musolino, who turned his hand to many trades, but was only good at one – laundering the Trovatos’ dirty money – was also made a Knight of Bethlehem.
But until his arrest two years later, when the full story was revealed both in the press and in court, no one seemed to have realized that Coco Trovato might belong to the ’Ndrangheta. Indeed, that he was the ’Ndrangheta. Not even the fact that this model citizen, this respected entrepreneur, registered each and every one of his restaurants in the names of his wife and brother-in-law aroused the slightest suspicion. How could anyone see ulterior motives in such family loyalty?
There were clues, however, for those who looked hard enough.
Franco’s favourite of all his restaurants was the Wall Street – a pizzeria that clan members called ‘Five Stars’ because it had one star more than the Griso, which was the most popular restaurant in Lecco in the late 1980s. The Wall Street was Franco’s office. When his Testarossa was parked outside, you could guarantee that he would be there. He loved the place and was adamant that everything about it should be of the highest quality. It was a first-class restaurant, and if anything went wrong, it had to be put right. Immediately. On one occasion, a window got broken. Franco called his fellow businessman, the chairman of the Lecco Tradesmen’s Association, Giuseppe Crippa, who had a factory in Olginate which made aluminium fittings.
Crippa was initially reluctant. After all, broken glass was not his problem. He supplied – and repaired – window frames, not the glass within them. Franco was livid. How dare Crippa contradict him? ‘I’m going to come round there right now and show you.’ He slammed down the receiver and jumped into his car. Luckily for Giuseppe Crippa, he couldn’t find the address of the factory. Frustrated, but calmer, he picked up the phone again. This time Crippa was more respectful. Indeed, he took pains to make it clear that the respect and friendship that bound them must not be jeopardized over something as trivial as a window. The window was repaired. Franco was happy. And Giuseppe Crippa continued to provide fittings to both the Wall Street and Il Portico, another restaurant owned by the Trovatos in Airuno, also in the province of Lecco. Envious gossips among the local craftsmen couldn’t understand how he’d won the contract, since the prices he’d quoted were higher than those of the other ‘competitors’.
It should, however, be stressed that Crippa’s relationship with the Wall Street was purely a professional one – he was a supplier. He could not be expected to have known anything about Coco Trovato’s shady dealings. And even though he appeared before the Court of Appeal in Milan, he was formally acquitted of any crime. Indeed he was amazed to learn that Trovato had any connection with the ’Ndrangheta. No crime, no guilt. That said, the court did censure the relationship between the former chairman of the Association of Lecco Tradesmen and the boss Coco Trovato.
But Crippa was not the only person who had never heard of ’Ndrangheta actitvities in Lecco or who had no doubts about Trovato’s integrity. Local politicians exchanged greetings with him and went to eat pizza in his pizzerias. Where’s the harm, after all, in dining in the restaurant of a model tradesman? Only one person persisted in thinking ill of him – the Lecco public prosecutor, Armando Spataro. Spataro found the eulogizing of Musolino and Trovato a little odd and ordered the tapping of Giuseppe Crippa’s phone. It was he who intercepted the phone conversation between Crippa and Trovato about the broken window, in which the boss unleashed his fury on the leader of the Lecchese businessmen. It became a tiny footnote in what would come to be known as Operation Wall Street, an anti-mafia investigation originally launched by Spataro in 1991 and which would eventually reveal the extent of ’Ndrangheta involvement throughout the region.
By that point Lecco was front-page news all over Italy. The town woke up at last and realized that the ’Ndrangheta existed. And it was a shock: for the first time in Lombardy a charge of mafia-style criminal association was brought. But the investigation would take time, and until Spataro was in a position to arrest Coco Trovato, he and his family had an unassailable position in society. So, with the medal of the Order of the Knights of Bethlehem on his chest, Trovato (thanks to his wife) and his brother-in-law could walk around with their heads held high. Their noses were clean and they could meet anyone they liked. Including a new breed of emerging politicans.
•
A few weeks have passed since our meeting in the mall. This time Di Bella has chosen to meet us in his own home – it’s almost as though he has dropped his guard – and his insights into Coco Trovato’s links with the world of politics are, frankly, astonishing.
‘The Northern League spoke a different language, but it was after the same things as the others: votes and power. And Franco, who had never cared two hoots about the colour of flags, understood much sooner than ordinary people that big changes were on the way. When Tangentopoli, the corruption scandal that changed the course of Italian politics, broke in 1992, I read about it in the newspapers, like everyone else; Franco had seen it coming years in advance. He’d started saddling the colt when it was still so small that nobody else would have dreamed of betting on it. He knew that if it later grew into a champion racehorse, he wouldn’t even need to chase after it. It would recognize its master of its own accord and come trotting tamely back to him.’
Di Bella is in full flow, and even the smallest details float up to the surface from his memory. Unknown facts concerning the major political developments of those years, as well as completely unknown negotiations over votes for favours. Events that any journalist would love to write about, investigate and work on. Details that confirm that the ’Ndrangheta is no longer an abstract phenomenon, but an intricate spider’s web that spreads over the whole of northern Italy. More questions, more answers. Then the bell rings twice in a row. Nobody speaks. The silence is oppressive. The kind where your heart slows down and seems to take on a life of its own; it beats so hard you can feel your pulse throbbing under your watch-strap. A third ring. ‘Turn off the recorders,’ he mimes to us without speaking. He picks up our bags for us, puts them into our hands, turns us round bodily and pushes us out onto the balcony. ‘Stay out there and keep quiet until I come back.’ And as he closes the French window and lowers the old blind, our protests of ‘Hey, wait a minute’ are cut short. Neither of us dares look the other in the eye. We are aware only of the sound of our breathing and a tingling in the fingers that clutch our computer bags. We are rooted to the spot. Not a sound comes from inside the flat – neither a reassuring sound nor a frightening one. Nothing. The flats across the road seem deserted. And even if someone were in them, what could they do to help us? Nothing. For the rest, nobody knows where we are, so how could they search for us? What an unpleasant place to die – a balcony no one has set foot on for months or years.
Then the blind rises again. Slowly. Too slowly, perhaps. We instinctively hold our breath. Then his voice, normal again, says: ‘It’s OK. Don’t just stand there, come inside.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Nobody,’ he replies. ‘There was nobody there. We can go on, if you like.’
A nobody who’d rung the doorbell three times and who might come back. There’s no way of eliciting an explanation. Di Bella wants to go on. We don’t.
It’s a week before we can bring ourselves to retrace our steps. We do so because what Di Bella has told us is extraordinary – and very disturbing. But it all remains to be verified. He has promised he can do just that, and today he’s going to keep that promise. We’re calmer now, and ready to listen.
Di Bella captures the atmosphere of the 1980s very well: the time when the parties of the ‘First Republic’ that was founded after the Second World War were beginning to break up at the national level. It was still several years before Tangentopoli, which would mark the end of the national five-party coalition of the Christian Democrats, the Liberals, the Republicans, the Social Democrats and the Socialists formed in 1981, and lead to the rise of Silvio Berlusconi and the beginning of the so-called ‘Second Republic’. But in the north things were moving fast. In Lombard towns like Varese, Como, Bergamo, Lecco and Brescia, and in the Veneto too, people were excited to hear local politicians talk of secession. The idea of federalism was still a long way off, but there was widespread resentment about having to pay taxes to the capital. The first green-shirt rallies were held.
‘Franco Coco Trovato had chosen to back the Northern League. If Franco had decided, there was no point in arguing. After all, what difference did it make to us whether the Northern League or the Christian Democrats were in power? Our lives would be the same and more than likely our deaths would be too. Better to discuss the details of the theft of two big bulldozers in the Bergamo area. That was our daily bread, but the baker was Franco. He was the one who kneaded the dough. The only one.
‘So I watched and listened and kept quiet. I was present on at least two other occasions when Coco Trovato reminded his companions – a sizeable group including Angelo Sirianni, who would take over from him after his arrest in October 1992 – to vote for the Northern League and go around giving them good publicity. Which I did. I sponsored them, those northern bastards. I pleaded their cause with all the people I had any influence over. But on 6 June 1990 I didn’t vote for them myself. It was a matter of principle. I didn’t tell anybody, though. As Coco Trovato said, it was better to mind your own business.’
In the elections of 6 May 1990 the Northern League made a breakthrough: out of a total of 7 million Lombards, more than 1.2 million chose the League. In Como and Lecco the Northern League received 126,000 votes and became the second-largest party. In the meantime, Coco Trovato had gone to prison and made way for the new generation of ’Ndranghetisti.
Something similar may have happened to Angelo Ciocca, one of the Northern League’s younger stars, who entered politics in 1996 and won the 2010 regional elections in the constituency of Pavia with about 19,000 votes. Despite his reputation as a highly skilled operator, Ciocca made a foolish mistake by shaking hands he should never have gone anywhere near. In the summer of 2009, when he was still a member of the Pavia local council, he was photographed by the carabinieri of the District Anti-mafia Office of Milan in Piazza Petrarca in Pavia. With him were three men: Giuseppe Neri, a lawyer, boss of the local ’Ndrangheta clan and a friend of Carlo Antonio Chiriaco, president of the Pavia local health authority; Antonio Dieni, a builder whose name appears frequently in the files of the Anti-mafia office; and Rocco Del Prete: at the time the campaign for the local elections was in full swing and, according to the magistrates, Neri was sponsoring Del Prete, who was running for a council seat as a member of the local party Rinnovare Pavia.
A few days earlier a phone call between Neri and Ciocca had been recorded. They had discussed a property transaction concerning a flat. Ciocca’s meeting with Neri and the two other compari took place opposite the flat in question. They entered. A little while later they came out and went straight to a branch of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank. What happened inside is not recorded. According to the anti-mafia investigators, however, the flat was sold to Ciocca at a bargain price to induce him to use his influence in favour of the candidature of Del Prete, which was opposed by the Northern League in Pavia. The election solved the problem, because Neri’s man got 251 votes and was top of the reserve list of unelected members.
A year later, on 13 July 2010, both Neri and Chiriaco were arrested along with 300 other people in the biggest round-up of the Calabrian mafia that had ever been made in Italy. The inquiry was led by Ilda Boccassini, one of the best-known public prosecutors in Italy, particularly noted for her investigations into mafia infiltration in the north, and, more recently, into alleged corruption among the associates of Silvio Berlusconi. That compromising photograph of Ciocca’s meeting with Neri was part of the mass of paperwork this latest inquiry produced.
Ciocca pleaded innocent and denied all charges. But the incident raised many questions. And not only in the heads of the electors of Pavia. Giancarlo Giorgetti, head of the local branches of the Northern League and Ciocca’s political sponsor, evidently had his own doubts: because after the publication of the photograph he got into his car and drove to Pavia to meet Ciocca at the Lo Scoglio pizzeria. This was the evening before an important summit on organized crime in Via Bellerio in Milan, the headquarters of the Northern League.
Ilda Boccassini’s investigation centred on one of the largest building firms in Lombardy: Perego Costruzioni.2 For the ’Ndrangheta, being in control of Perego Costruzioni had at least three advantages: it enabled them to manage directly the earth-moving business, always one of the organization’s favoured areas of business in Lombardy, to give contracts and subcontracts to allied firms and, above all, to control through an intermediary a business that would be in a position to win major public contracts, not least for Expo 2015, as the company outwardly appeared regular and above all suspicion
The offices of this firm were a point of contact between members of the ’ndrine on the one hand and people employed by legitimate business, or even by the forces of law and order, on the other. One of the ’Ndrangheta operatives was Salvatore Strangio, an indefatigable boss who maintained the links between 150 Calabrian families and handled their business in the north through the Perego company. Strangio was heard in a wire-tap rebuking some members of a rival clan for talking too much, because they might attract the attention of the police: silence was crucial, he stressed, if you wanted to achieve your objectives. But he himself, in the same conversation, unwittingly revealed the ’Ndrangheta’s aims: ‘Perego,’ he said, ‘will win a lot of contracts for Expo 2015, but there are some people who don’t understand that and create problems and confusion.’
Among the supposedly more legitimate figures involved in Perego, partly to keep rumours at bay – or so the ’Ndrangheta hoped – were Pietro Pilello and a member of the carabinieri.
Pilello was a successful accountant in Milan and had held a variety of public appointments which today might seem surprising: from the Milanese metro to the Milan International Fair. He had also been chairman of the auditors of Rai International and Rai Way, both divisions of the state-owned broadcasting company. Because of these directorships he had been investigated by the public prosecutor’s office of Naples looking into alleged breaches of the law in connection with Rai Fiction, and features in their wire-taps.
The other man was no less a figure than the provincial commandant of the Vercelli carabinieri, who was alleged to have ensured that fines imposed on Perego’s lorries for carrying excess loads (something they often did to maximize profits) were cancelled, and to have swapped tip-offs about phone-taps for an ultimately unsuccessful candidature in the regional elections. The official was charged by the Boccassini inquiry with being in league with the ’Ndrangheta. When the story was made public by the press, he replied through a blog, saying that his passion for politics was well known, that two criminals talking on the phone (as in the wire-tap that incriminated him) might say anything without the knowledge of the person concerned, and that he had met Salvatore Strangio, the boss who allegedly wanted him to be a regional councillor, only twice. Even the admission of those two meetings, however, is enough to send a shiver down your spine.
Some other big names from the Lombard ’Ndrangheta occur repeatedly in Boccassini’s files. One of the small businessmen connected to Perego leads straight to Rocco Cristello,3 a boss of the area of Monza and Seregno – Mariano Comense to be precise. Cristello is well known from numerous inquiries by the public prosecutor’s office in Monza to have had close links with the Chinese mafia, so the appearance of his name in connection with Perego implies high-level collusion between the company and Chinese organized crime. It was deeply ironic for a party like the Northern League, which for years had made protectionism one of its cornerstones.
•
But the Northern League was not beset by misfortune in Lombardy alone. In July 2010, at about the same time as the arrests ordered by Boccassini, Giulio Viale resigned as councillor in charge of the budget from the town council of Bordighera in Liguria. Viale had been a Northern League councillor for years, but when a report was sent to the prefecture which alleged collusion with the ’Ndrangheta, he chose to give up his post. Undoubtedly he was innocent, but for reasons of political expediency it was better that he stepped aside. Apart from the consternation caused by such accusations in Bordighera itself, Viale’s daughter is Sonia Viale, Undersecretary for the Economy and a former aide to the Minister of Justice, Roberto Castelli. Better one resignation than the dissolution of the whole council on the grounds of infiltration by the mafia and giving favours in exchange for votes and a scandal that would reach the heart of government.
‘Remember, we won you the election, so you can’t say no,’ was the ’Ndrangheta’s motto in Bordighera as well as in Lombardy. And once elected with ’Ndrangheta support, no politician could back out of the relationship. It was a vicious circle.
There are other, similar cases. In Domodossola in 1993, the council of the Piedmontese town was dissolved, and an investigation began into three councillors, who were later convicted of criminal association. In 1995 the entire town council of Bardonecchia was dissolved as a result of a scandal over construction contracts. In this corner of Piedmont, the complex web of votes and contracts was dominated by the Mazzaferro family, a powerful Calabrian clan. The collusion between the Mazzaferros and the council had been going on for years, with votes going to councillors who would ensure that lucrative contracts went to firms favoured by the clan, but it was the Campo Smith affair that brought matters to a head. Campo Smith was a massive project to build a hotel and apartment complex and clearly had only one purpose: to enrich Rocco Lo Presti, the Mazzaferros’ man in Bardonecchia. Just as in Bordighera and Domodossola dangerous friendships had originated with simple handshakes at electoral meetings, and innocent pats on the back had eventually led to handcuffs being clapped around wrists.
•
The next time we meet, Di Bella wants to talk about another aspect of local politics: the trade unions. It’s a Wednesday morning. Again at a time when there is hardly anyone around. When we ring at the entryphone Di Bella doesn’t even wait for us to speak: ‘Yes, I know it’s you. Come on up. ‘My car is being repaired, I have to wait for the mechanic to find a second-hand spare part. In the old days I didn’t bother to take my cars to the garage; I smashed up one car after another. I was always buying new ones. Sometimes I’d keep them for a month, but never any longer than that. They guzzled petrol and they were fast. The only time I drove a saloon car was when I wanted to keep a low profile. I think about these things now that I have to drive a fifteen-year-old car; back then it didn’t occur to me. I don’t really miss the old days. But you can never turn your back on the past completely. There are certain people who are always criticizing the ’Ndrangheta but who would still be walking around in patched-up jeans, if it hadn’t been for Franco.’
Who? More politicians?
‘People who ought to be looking after the workers.’ Di Bella points to our tape recorder: ‘Turn it on.’
‘Before Franco Coco Trovato came to power in Lecco the unions were barely functioning, just scraping by. They had hardly any money and worked in poky little offices. Then they began to benefit from Franco’s favours – new offices, cheap rents, that sort of thing. I’m talking about the big three, the CGIL, the CISL and the UIL [Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori, Unione Italiana del Lavoro]. It was a clever strategy: Franco began from below, he was always prepared to be patient; he identified the most promising men in the various unions, the ones he could rely on, and he built them up, by ensuring they got the votes they needed, or by giving donations.
‘Obviously the favours had to be paid for. And that was how Franco managed to infiltrate several of his own men into the unions. People he’d arranged jobs for in key companies. They then became union officials, which gave them influence over the other members of the workforce. Soon they were in a position to hurt the factory owners and, at the same time, clip the wings of any kind of protest against “friendly” businesses.
‘In factories protected by Franco, the “real” trade unions didn’t have any power. If Franco had an interest in a business and an employee made a complaint, he got nowhere. Nothing happened. Worse than nothing, in fact. Soon, either at work or outside the factory itself, in a bar, say, or a café, he’d be threatened, and if he didn’t take the hint, he’d be running a serious risk: if he was lucky, losing his job; if he was unlucky, getting beaten up into the bargain. In “enemy” firms the approach was quite different. Franco would get the workers to start industrial disputes, to try to bankrupt the firm. It was a method that reached the parts that the protection racket didn’t reach. The objective was always the same. At that time, if eight out of ten workers appealed to the unions, it meant closure, and that’s what Franco was waiting for. Once a factory closed down and the management was forced out, he could take over, either in person or putting one of his relatives in charge. He made money out of the industrial disputes too. They were a real racket. The clan kept a percentage of any money paid out to the workers by the employers at the end of a dispute. And money was always paid out. Because the threat of a strike wasn’t like it is today, when it doesn’t scare anyone. At that time a strike meant a mass strike. It brought the whole firm – even the smallest firm – to a standstill, and that was no laughing matter. So the workers almost always won the disputes, and Franco won too. He won three times over. Firstly, because he pocketed the money. Secondly, because he thwarted the union. Thirdly, because he either established a hold over the owners or drove them to bankruptcy.
‘Thinking about how to control the factories by controlling the unions was typical of Franco. He was too clever to think only about the top people. He had friends everywhere. From the smallest town councils to the regional authority. He boasted about it. To tell the truth, sometimes he sounded a bit of a megalomaniac. “I’ve put people in politics,” he used to say, “I’ve always done what I liked.”
‘There was a time, in the late 1980s, when every time we had dinner he’d start talking about the football club. He’d put a lot of money into Calcio Lecco. He had some way of transferring the money to a lawyer who was the official owner of the club and co-owner of a firm that manufactured light-bulbs, File S.p.a. The lawyer ran the club, because I don’t think Franco knew much about football; it was more a matter of principle: being able to say, “The people of Lecco can’t even organize their own football team without me.” And in fact later, when the club was taken over by a clean company, Roda Acciai, it didn’t do at all well – further proof that, although he was a braggart, Franco was usually right. It was the same when he talked about the women he slept with: everything he said was true. Or when he boasted about having men he could rely on in Mandello del Lario, Varenna, Abbadia Lariana, Ballabio, Barzio, Valgreghentino, Calolziocorte, Pasturo and all over the Valsassina. Not to mention Olginate.’
Di Bella worked as a bartender in Olginate for years and spent a lot of time there. Now he wants to tell us about his experiences there. All about them. To name names. And some of those names are quite surprising.
‘In the good old days – good for us, I mean, 1983 and 1984 – the town had no more than 15,000 inhabitants, and half of them were southerners. Next to Lecco, Olginate was the place where Franco had the largest number of investments: restaurants, pizzerias and bars. It was like one big money laundry. And it was there that he was most in need of support in the local council. There was a trade unionist factory worker who was employed by SAE of Lecco, a steel firm. This man was very able. His name was Italo Bruseghini. He knew how to handle people and he’d known Franco for some time, though I don’t think they’d ever done business together until then. But when the factory closed, he stopped being a worker to become a full-time trade unionist, and later became mayor of Olginate. Franco, who never placed a bet on the wrong person (except me, perhaps), gave the order, and the people voted en masse for Bruseghini. There were friendly councillors in Airuno and Calolziocorte too. But Bruseghini was different. In the first place he was mayor. What’s more, when Franco was arrested in 1992, most of the local politicians dropped him. Even those who were themselves later arrested. But Bruseghini was different. Even after Operation Wall Street, he maintained his links with Trovato. I don’t think he turned his back on anyone.’
We should make clear at this point that Bruseghini has never before been implicated in any judicial investigations. He himself has made the following statement.
I note to my surprise that on p. 78 [of the Italian edition of this book] it is claimed, with some emphasis, that in the 1990s Olginate was a centre for money laundering and the then mayor – in other words, I – took a bribe to grant a licence to open a pizzeria.
I deny this, and deny that I have ever accepted money or other benefits from anyone. The truth is that Di Bella was never granted a licence, so he would have paid a considerable sum of money to obtain nothing. Moreover, I retired at the end of 1995, when the SAE was still active. I have never been a full-time or part-time trade unionist. I first became mayor in 1975 and I remained in the post until 2001, enjoying the trust and respect of all the townspeople. I wish to add that Dr Proietto is the magistrate who in late 2003 sent me notification that the investigations into events that had occurred in 1990–1 had been extended. The investigations were later dropped and I never received any further communication, nor was I ever questioned by the magistrate or by any other representatives of the judicial police. I can only assume now that the investigation was based on false allegations. I have always fought against organized crime. (Statements published by the Gazzetta di Lecco on 4 December 2010.)
Di Bella continues: ‘In 1990 I was running the Bar San Carlo in Olginate, and after a few months I had the idea of turning it into a pizzeria. The premises had a restricted licence, and, judging from what I was told at the town hall, there was no possibility of changing it. So I went to see Mario Trovato. I briefly explained the problem to him, and he immediately advised me to speak to an Olginate accountant. When I went to the accountant’s office, he already knew the whole story and said that this kind of thing needed “lubricating”. Four or five days later he dropped in at my bar for a coffee: “I’ve been to the town hall. I suggest you pay a visit to the mayor.” He emphasized the word “visit”, to make his meaning quite clear and leave no room for doubt. “Would three million lire be enough?” I asked. He nodded and went out.
‘I got the money, put it in an envelope, which I left unsealed, and got into my car. I drove to the office of the mayor’s secretary, giving my name, then went into Bruseghini’s office and filled him in on the subject. The mayor replied, “There’s only one pizzeria in Olginate – ‘La Sila’ – so it is theoretically possible for us to grant another licence.” He paused, then went on, “However . . .” I got the message. I produced the envelope and laid it on the table. The mayor opened it, counted the money without taking it out of the envelope and put it in a drawer. He sat in silence for a while, then said he hoped I’d bring him some votes in the next local elections and that he’d do his best.
‘I felt like saying, “Are you serious? You’re a friend of Franco and Mario Trovato and Salvatore Marinaro and you’re asking me for votes?” I couldn’t see why he needed my support, but I supposed extra votes were always useful in a small town. And he was as good as his word. A week later a big, burly policeman came to the bar and handed me some papers to be signed. It was so easy, because everyone in Olginate was part of the same network. But the fact that you’ve paid a bribe doesn’t give you a lifetime guarantee. A few years later, I was forced to sell the San Carlo to Coco Trovato’s sister-in-law. Business was booming, but I couldn’t refuse. I consoled myself with the fact that at least he paid me eighty million lire as a token of gratitude and made sure that all my debts were cancelled. These things happen. You work hard, then you’re forced to sell up. Never get too fond of any business, because they come and go.’
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In Italy, there seems to be no escape from votes for favours. The practice is so widespread it makes you wonder if any other form of democratic expression exists.
In Trezzano sul Naviglio, Tiziano Butturini, the former PD (Partito Democratico, the main left-of-centre party) mayor and later chairman of TASM S.p.a and Amiacque S.r.l., the two public companies responsible for maintaining the water supply in the southern part of Milan, was arrested for vote-buying in 2010. Also arrested were the PDL (Popolo della Libertà, the main right-of-centre party) councillor Michele Iannuzzi, who until 2005 had been in charge of public works and ecology, the council’s surveyor and a local entrepreneur. The latter was the vice-chairman of Kreiamo S.p.a., the property company which, according to the charges, was, on several occasions, given preferential treatment in the assigning of contracts by public officials. The warrants for the first three men came a year after a wave of arrests which had also affected the owners of Kreiamo: in November 2009 the chairman of the company had been arrested in connection with an investigation which led to seventeen members of the Barbaro-Papalia clan being accused of corruption, criminal association and a long string of other crimes. They were already in prison, having been convicted of other crimes, and all the properties registered in their names were confiscated. The inquiry continued and soon uncovered evidence against the councillors, the second tier of the organized collusion.
To give just one example among many, in Trezzano there was an area which seemed ripe for development, but planning permission was refused. So Kreiamo made out a cheque for 12,000 euros to Iannuzzi as an advance in exchange for an agreement to carve up the territory. The amendment was passed in February 2007, after which – although no evidence to prove it has yet been uncovered – the balance of the favour, another 100,000 euros, must have been paid. And when Kreiamo went into administration in December 2009, some surprising off-the-books payments were discovered – a whole string of consultancies which bore no relation to anything in the real world.
Kreiamo was also involved in another important investigation into the Milanese ’Ndrangheta, which centred on the fruit and vegetable market. In December 2004 a consignment of 22 kilograms of cocaine was seized in a flat in Milan. This led to the discovery of an international drug-smuggling network, run by the Morabito-Palamara clan. This ring imported hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the Lombard capital and invested and laundered the proceeds in a vast network of businesses and workers’ and transport cooperatives, all of which were active in the wholesale markets. Eleven firms that operated in the fruit and vegetable market were raided. One of them was Sogemi, the firm part-owned by the Milan city council, which ran the whole area. One of the seventy people placed under investigation was a local police officer employed in the food-rationing section, the office that deals with the control of public shops and restaurants. Some employees of the licensing sector of the two Lombard town councils were also investigated.
What else could have shifted these mountains of money than votes for favours? The case has yet to be proved, but here too the name of Kreiamo crops up. Alfredo Iorio, the chairman of the firm, who was arrested in 2009, spoke on the telephone with the former councillor of Trezzano and listed three names of PDL politicians whom he intended to have elected. Iannuzzi replied: ‘Then we’ll draw up a list of councils we’ve supplied votes to, and I’ll pay a visit to a PDL city councillor in Milan and present him with the bill for our expenses.’ The phone call broke off at this point, but from the transcriptions by the Milan Anti-mafia Investigation Department the aim is pretty clear: the two men wanted a candidate ‘of their own’ to support in the regional elections of March 2010. It was impossible to achieve this through the complex party machinery, so they just checked through the list of candidates who were running and identified four. A trivial matter, you might think. Two small businessmen with a provincial politician, bragging about their medium-rank political friendships.
But the shadow of doubt is precisely the aim of the ’Ndrangheta, which always tries to pass unnoticed, like a chameleon. If you examine the facts of the case, however, the man behind Kreiamo was none other than Salvatore Barbaro, the son-in-law of Rocco Papalia, the old boss of the province of Milan. According to the Anti-mafia Office, Barbaro and a dozen district bosses met regularly on the outskirts of the city to discuss business, politics and votes for favours. And that was not all. Since 2006 they had discussed long-term strategies too. How do we know that? The killers convicted of the murder in 2006 of Giuseppe Fortugno, the PD vice-president of the regional council of Calabria, went up north to Milan before carrying out the operation. They made several trips, in fact. The last of them was on the day before they killed the politician. One wonders why they went to the capital of Lombardy on the eve of a major assassination. The theory the magistrates are working on is that they went to get authorization for the execution. It’s a sign that the new Milanese mafia has plenty of poison to spread. And that in Trezzano, as in Reggio Calabria, elections were still an important hunting ground for the ’Ndrangheta.
After the regional elections of March 2010 a situation arose which would be hilarious if its consequences weren’t so serious. On one side was the member of parliament Angela Napoli; on the other the regional councillor elect, Nino De Gaetano. Napoli wrote a parliamentary question to Roberto Maroni, the Minister for the Interior. She wanted him to check up on her colleague on the regional council, because ‘De Gaetano’s electoral campaign was run by Bruno Tegano and his wife in person.’ The Teganos were old allies of the Trovatos. And Bruno’s wife was the same woman who was shown on all television channels standing in the piazza outside the police station after the arrest on 26 April 2010 of her brother-in-law Giovanni (who had been living in hiding for seventeen years) screaming: ‘He’s a man of peace.’ A man of mafia peace, maybe. One thing was for sure: either Napoli was a mad parliamentarian who made gratuitous accusations of collusion with the ’Ndrangheta or Maroni would be well advised to pay attention. Sure enough, a year later, on 5 April 2011, Bruno Tegano himself was arrested.
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The threads of collusion are so fine that they’re often invisible. The ’Ndrangheta permeates life in Italy, right down to the little local bakery, the restaurant that turns over a regular profit, or the one in the suburbs that serves only to produce fake receipts. Everything is grist to their mill, and nothing is underestimated. If the families need a helping hand there is always the town surveyor, or the legal practice that has made VAT fraud its stock in trade. In fact, there is a veritable army of officials and minor administrators ready to help the ’Ndrangheta and take a little share of the rewards.
‘Bruseghini wasn’t the only politician I paid in the course of my career,’ Di Bella reveals. ‘I gave money to many others. It happens. If you have to deal with the bureaucracy you inevitably have to pay. In 1995 I bought a restaurant in Cisano Bergamasco. It was a bargain, though there were some complications. The previous owner had falsified the papers of his predecessor. The restaurant was mortgaged, and there was a foreclosure hanging over it. Then the local carabinieri told me I couldn’t open for business. So I went to see the director of Lecco registry office. I told him the story, and he wrote a letter, hardly bothering to look at me. It wasn’t a real letter, but a sheet of paper with no heading and with some notes on it, which he told me to take to the head of the archive. I delivered it myself. The clerk looked at me and didn’t ask any questions. He went away for about ten minutes and came back with a folder. It was the file on the original owner of the restaurant. He rewrote the whole thing in front of me. It was a long job, because he wrote it out by hand. But eventually he managed to backdate all the changes of ownership so that I could start the process of applying for a licence. It cost me three million lire [about 15,500 euros], but it was worth it. I recouped my whole investment in the first two weeks’ work.
‘Every town council had a particular speciality. In Malgrate there was the Tradesmen’s Union. The mayor granted financing on easy terms – not to everyone, but certainly to members of our clan. In exchange he demanded a straight 10 per cent. In cash, of course.
‘Then there was the Lecco Chamber of Commerce. From 1983 onwards the accountant and chairman Giuseppe Pupa had a very specific task, at least until Coco Trovato was arrested: helping friends and firms connected with the clan. I don’t know how much he was paid, or indeed if he was paid. But I expect he was.
‘Thanks to these friendships, my test for admission to the REC, the register of practising tradesmen, was almost laughably easy. I went to Como, because Lecco hasn’t been independent, even in its Chamber of Commerce, since 1992. They asked me what ketchup, pepper and flaky pastry were. I was so bored by the whole process that I said I couldn’t remember. The only time I answered was when they asked me what receipts were for. After the test a member of the committee led me out into the corridor. Five minutes later he came back to say I could go. I asked him if I’d passed. ‘Go home and you’ll see,’ he said. Sure enough, a few days later my certificate of membership of the REC arrived. And the amazing thing is that it didn’t cost me a cent, even though the usual price was a bribe of six million lire. Without the bribe and without connections, they made it really difficult for anyone to pass the test. There were environmental restrictions to be considered, and the distance from other restaurants had to be taken into consideration. You were actually supposed to know about all these things. It made REC membership seem like a mirage. Unless you had six million. But even then someone had to sponsor you, and that cost money too. The benefits of the clan can even be extended to non-members, as long as they pay up – through the nose usually – and never find out how wide the network of collusion is.’
Di Bella himself did people plenty of favours. There was someone who wanted to open a perfumery and needed a contact in the council, and someone who asked him to put in a good word to smooth the path of a building contract. ‘I sent a lot of people to ask for favours, and made money out of it.’ In this way, the ’Ndrangheta binds itself to a region, to its people, not just in the south, but all over Italy. It’s a way of gaining respectability. Indeed, throughout Lombardy, in the many towns we travelled through while writing this book, they, the men of the ’Ndrangheta, are always considered ‘above suspicion’. Whenever the police burst in flourishing arrest warrants, the first reaction of people who are interviewed about the suspects is one of surprise: ‘He was such a respectable person.’ When the authorities consistently fail to take any action against them, even criminals become ‘respectable people’.