ROME LETTER:'WE'VE NEVER charged Berlusconi, never taken a case against him on the money question."
The speaker is Antonio Ingroia, a Palermo-based Mafia investigator who, in the 1980s, was a member of the celebrated anti-Mafia pool formed by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two Sicilian Mafia investigators killed by Cosa Nostra in 1992.
"Many different pentiti[Mafia turncoats] have told us that the Mafia poured money into Berlusconi's companies, but none of them was ever precise and specific enough, none of them was able to give us the information that would have enabled us to retrace, in terms of balance sheets, the movements of money," Ingroia adds.
“We did identify some strange movements into the Fininvest accounts around the time that the turncoats spoke of, but when we asked prime minister Berlusconi about these, he availed of his right not to answer.”
Ingroia has never been afraid of investigating “delicate” questions and so it comes as no surprise to learn that he has plenty to say on the “ultra-delicate” question of the supposed relations between former prime minister Berlusconi and Cosa Nostra.
The question is all the more delicate given that Ingroia and other Palermo-based magistrates are currently investigating the possibility that Senator Marcello Dell’Utri, long-time business associate and right-hand man of Berlusconi, may have acted as an “intermediary” between the Italian state and Cosa Nostra from 1992-94, immediately after the killings of both Borsellino and Falcone.
Dell’Utri is not just any old right-hand man. One of the major driving forces behind the formation of Berlusconi’s original Forza Italia party, Palermo-born Dell’Utri has already received a 7½-year sentence for Mafia collusion. That sentence, which was confirmed at the first appeal hearing, comes up for the second and final appeal next March.
A significant juridical aspect of the Dell’Utri trial is that the first appeal ruled that the accusations of “Mafia association” could be proven up to 1992, but not after.
Ingroia and other magistrates believe that recent testimony from different pentiti may prove that Dell'Utri's association with Cosa Nostra continued long after 1992.
Dell’Utri’s “constant, consistent” relations with the Mafia go back to the 1970s, according to Palermo investigators. That was a time when wealthy industrialists, such as the emerging Berlusconi, were at risk of kidnapping for ransom.
To protect himself and his family, Berlusconi, rather than appealing to the police, turned to business associate Dell’Utri, who engaged Vittorio Mangano as a stalliere or groom at Berlusconi’s villa in Arcore, near Milan.
The point about Mangano, however, is that he was a thoroughbred Sicilian Mafioso, a senior figure in the Calò family and who in 2000 was found guilty of two Mafia murders.
According to investigators, Mangano had been sent by the Mafia not just to protect the Berlusconi family but also to open up “relations” with an emerging, obviously talented industrialist.
Through Mangano, who lived at Arcore for three years between 1973 and 1976, Dell’Utri brought senior Mafia godfathers such as Stefano Bontade and Mimmo Teresi to meet Berlusconi.
Investigators believe they told him to be tranquillo, that they would protect him, but that, in return, they were interested in investing money in his business affairs. Here, it must be said that no court has ever proved that the Mafia did in fact invest money with the Berlusconi holding company, Fininvest.
However, Mafia pentitiSalvatore Cancemi and Calogero Ganci have both claimed that in the 1970s, Fininvest made annual payments of about €100,000 to Cosa Nostra, presumably in return for a level of "protection".
Was this the beginning of a long story of extortion and then collaboration between Cosa Nostra and the Berlusconi empire?
What is known is that when media tycoon Berlusconi opted to make his famous “taking to the field” of politics speeches in 1993-94, no one was more enthusiastic about the project nor more important in its organisation than Dell’Utri.
Ingroia, the magistrate, now asks an intriguing question. Given that it is well established that at least two of Berlusconi’s closest advisers, former cabinet under- secretary Gianni Letta and Mediaset chief executive Fedele Confalonieri, advised him against entering politics, how come Berlusconi chose to ignore their advice and opt to follow that of Dell’Utri?
“It’s an established fact that Cosa Nostra indicated that people should vote for Forza Italia,” Ingroia says. “As to why they made this choice, that’s another matter. Was it the result of agreements already made or was it just a spontaneous, ideological choice [by Cosa Nostra]?”
Ongoing investigations and at least one ongoing trial in Palermo involving former senior police officer and secret services chief Gen Mario Mori seem to prove beyond doubt that in the chaotic, turbulent atmosphere of 1992-1993, the Italian state attempted to open secret negotiations with Cosa Nostra.
The idea was to get the Mafia to haul off, in the wake not only of the Falcone and Borsellino killings but also after Mafia bomb attacks in both Florence and Rome.
Various pentiti, including Giovanni Brusca, the man who blew up Falcone, have claimed that Dell'Utri was the Mafia's point man in these negotiations. In that role, he is alleged to have put pressure on Berlusconi into taking a softer line with the Mafia.
Defenders of Berlusconi will argue that all of this sounds like conspiratorial fantasy. Perhaps.
What is sure is that when Sicilians came to vote in the 2001 general election, they elected 61 Forza Italia deputies in 61 single-seat Sicilian constituencies – 61-0.
Just a coincidence, of course.