The Dark Heart of Italy (38 page)

Now that he has been voted out of office, many people wonder what legislation Berlusconi passed which was either memorable, historic or wise. I’ve asked many of his supporters, inside and outside parliament, and they genuinely don’t know what to reply. Once the debate is moved from defence of the personality to defence of his policies, there’s normally a poignant silence. They don’t even know what to defend. A few, tellingly, mention the fact that he is the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister as if that, in itself, is achievement enough. The banning of smoking in public places is normally the only other thing they refer to. One or two mention public works like the proposed bridge linking
Calabria to Sicily, a bridge over troubled water if ever there was one. But even that project may well now be shelved. In reality, Berlusconi’s legacy is disastrous: public trust in the judiciary, the media, various sporting bodies, financial services and politicians themselves is non-existent. That lack of trust isn’t all Berlusconi’s doing, but he should bear the responsibility for continuously insulting any estate of the realm not under his direct control, from Rai to the then President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Even after a clear electoral result, it took Berlusconi over a week to concede defeat and he continues to delegitimise Romano Prodi at every opportunity.

His real legacy is the creation of an atmosphere in which the knee-jerk reaction to any accusation or investigation is, as I’ve said before, a weary shrug: ‘it’s not that I’m innocent, it’s that everyone else is just as guilty’. It’s a defence that suggests that we are all wasting our time pointing out imperfections because we are all equally imperfect. That was Luciano Moggi’s response to the football-fixing scandal (on which more below); it was, consistently, Berlusconi’s line of defence. A master of the art of
vittimismo
, he repeatedly suggested that he was under accusation only because magistrates had a grudge against him and that everyone else in Italy was up to something similar. It’s one, short step from that defence to something more corrosive: if you can persuade the public that we’re all as bad as each other, the result is exponential cynicism in which the only infringement truly considered ‘criminal’ is the singling out of someone for investigation. In this topsy-turvy world, the only people who are criminalised are the magistrates who thought they were upholding the law. They suddenly stand accused either of naivety (of not knowing that this is how Italy works) or else of prejudiced betrayal (of knowing that this is how Italy works but deciding to finger only their enemies). It is testament to Berlusconi’s brilliance as an illusionist that millions of Italians now genuinely believe that the magistrature is more pernicious to the country than the Cavaliere himself. That conjuring trick whereby the legal and illegal are suddenly confused was perfectly illustrated to me at dinner a few months ago. As invariably happens, the con
versation had come round to Berlusconi and one man, knowing my rather forthright opinions on the matter, eloquently tried to explain why he remained a supporter: ‘You remember what the Duc de la Rouchefoucauld said about hypocrisy? “Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue”. Think about that. You English are hypocritical because you want to disguise any vices, you always pay homage to virtue. But there’s no hypocrisy to most Italians and none at all to Berlusconi.’ It was a reasoning I heard again and again in the years subsequent to this book’s publication: he’s transparent about what he’s doing, and someone who is honest about his vices is more trustworthy than someone (usually on the left, or from the moralising parts of northern Europe) who is dishonest about their virtues.

Due to that ‘we’re all just as guilty’ defence, one of the most persistent criticisms of this book from Italians was that I had portrayed Britain as somehow morally superior when actually, readers said, it surely operates in exactly the same way. Is there, they asked with incredulity, any other way? If I couldn’t see comparable corruption back home it was either, they told me, because I was blinded by patriotism or because (more likely, they said) you British are so sophisticated and sly that your corruption is better disguised. I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that there were telling differences in behaviour between both countries, but many Italians refused to believe it. Inevitably, within a couple of years, I was eating humble pie and descending the steps of my metaphorical pulpit: rather than the antidote to Berlusconi’s business methods, a part of the British establishment suddenly appeared a willing, well-paid accomplice. The epistolary equivalent of a smoking gun had been found which led to the heart of the British government. David Mills, a British lawyer married to Tony Blair’s cabinet minister, Tessa Jowell, had written to his accountant asking for tax advice about $600,000 ‘long-term loan or a gift’ from the ‘B organisation’. ‘B’ was widely assumed to refer to Silvio Berlusconi who had, for years, been a client of Mills. (As an expert in corporate law, Mills is thought to have helped create the secretive ‘Group B’, that assortment of 29 companies
which have always been absent from the consolidated accounts of Berlusconi’s Fininvest company.) Mills was cross-examined by Italian magistrates in July 2004 and signed a confession in which he admitted that ‘Silvio Berlusconi, in recognition for the way I had protected him in various trials and investigations, had decided to put a sum of money my way’. Mills denies perjury or perverting the course of justice as a witness, but has been unable to explain the provenance of that vast sum of money from overseas. In July 2004, that same summer, Tony Blair was sojourning in Sardinia with Berlusconi who was sporting his infamous beige bandana. Of course, no-one knows what mention was made of Jowell or Mills, but the world, and not just Italy, was beginning to look suspiciously small. Later, as the disgusting loans-for-peerages scandal began to emerge, I had to concede that Britain didn’t exactly represent a moral benchmark against which other countries could be measured.

But I remain convinced that there is something exceptional and intriguing about the Italian blurring of good and bad. That moral ambiguity is epitomised by a word which is impossible to translate:
spregiudicatezza
. It means two very contradictory things, both ‘open-mindedness’ and yet, equally, ‘unscrupulousness’. It implies both something admirable and something much less so: both someone who ploughs their own furrow, who bravely goes their own way; but also someone who recognises no moral boundaries. It is thus, unsurprisingly, a word which is frequently used (with admiration) to describe Silvio Berlusconi and to explain his success.
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Only in Italy, I think, could one word encapsulate those two, contradictory extremes of the moral spectrum. One can hardly hold Berlusconi responsible for the interesting existence of a double-edged noun or for the sociological habits of an entire nation. But he brings into sharp relief the nuances of a country in which one can be both ‘open-minded’ and ‘amoral’.

The other consequence of that amoralism is a very surprising paradox. It was pointed out to me by a weary Italian journalist who has lived in London for 20 years. ‘Lawlessness creates abject conformity’, she said. ‘In a country so used to disregarding the
rules, one of the only yardsticks for behaviour is other people’s opinions.’ As so often with Italians abroad, her view of her homeland was very jaundiced, but the point seemed to make sense: if conduct is determined not by laws but by the desire for the approval of one’s peers, there will be minimal innovation or eccentricity. It creates a society which, for all its radical disregard for moral boundaries, is paradoxically very conformist. You only need to try putting something original like lamb on your pizza, or wearing a cut or colour which is unfashionable for the season, to realise how suffocating are the laws of public opinion.

It’s uncertain how the gripping, macabre Berlusconi saga will eventually end. For years I thought it perfectly possible that an attempt would be made on his life, either by left-wing extremists or, more likely, by one of the various mafias which might have felt betrayed by his government (as with Salvatore Lima, the mafia-linked Christian Democrat killed in the early 1990s, the politicians who are assassinated are often those who colluded with, rather than attacked, the underworld). The openness with which people countenanced the possibility of an assassination (even, on some occasions, openly hoping for it) seemed to suggest that it wasn’t unthinkable. Now that he is out of power that possibility has, hopefully, receded and the magnate won’t become a martyr. It may be that, now in his 71st year, ill-health will simply take its toll. Even when Prime Minister, he frequently retreated to various clinics; often, by his own admission, merely for hair transplants or another facelift, but on other occasions the visits were more serious. There are persistent rumours that the smiling, sun-tanned face isn’t an accurate reflection of his health. And yet, despite that, it seems inconceivable that Berlusconi will choose to retreat from the stage with dignity. If his health and any new ‘conflict of interests’ legislation permit, he will almost certainly hope to lead the opposition into the next general election. And it seems equally inconceivable that he will ever receive a definitive sentence for any criminal activity, not least because of the Statute of Limitations. The most likely scenario is that he will continue to be the maverick joker in the political pack. Electoral support may slowly ebb
away as his novelty decreases and his eccentricities increase, but he will always be deferred to: for as long as his family own three terrestrial television channels, he will be able to bend parliament to his warped vision of reality.

When I was doing book-readings around Italy, there was always one way I could guarantee sympathetic laughter from the audience. Trying to underline how difficult it was to explain Italy to the British, I would use one, very suggestive example: ‘how’, I asked with exasperation, ‘can I possibly explain to the British who Luciano Moggi is?’ They would laugh, nod and roll their eyes. Moggi was the kind of character you had to see to believe. You had to understand the threatening hints and allusions which hid behind his wit and repartee. Ever since I had been in Italy he had been the Director General of Juventus football club. Before that he had been at Torino and at Napoli during the soiled glory days of the Maradona era. Moggi, a former station master, was comic-book bad. Interviewed on TV after every Juventus game, often as a guest in an obsequious studio, Moggi was an awesome performer: breath-taking put-downs accompanied by his trademark droopy eyelids. When he smiled his whole face sparkled and he looked almost boyish, but he did ‘angry’ with frightening whispers. He was a small-time fixer who had risen through the ranks to the summit of power. He was nicknamed
Paletta
(‘lollipop man’). He was the person who, at the lucrative, powerful nexus of football and television, controlled all the traffic.

For years I had followed Italian football with dismay. I had gone to games and, as described here, witnessed the systematic favouring of Juventus in refereeing decisions. Many were convinced, like me, that something was rotten: Elio, an Italian psychedelic satirist – think Frank Zappa mixed with Vivian Stanshall – sang ironically in 1998 ‘
ti amo campionato, non sei falsato
’: ‘I love you championship, you’re not falsified’. I often argued late into the night with various Juve supporters trying to get them to admit that something suspicious was happening but they wouldn’t hear of it. One of those devout Juve supporters once quoted at me the motto of
the Order of the Garter: ‘honi soit qui mal y pense’, suggesting that if I was suspicious it was because of my own unclean conscience. It was a similar line taken by Moggi during the
moviole
, those slow-motion replays which analyse every frame of the football action on television: ‘don’t be paranoid’, he would say with a condescending smile as we watched another incredibly unfair decision, ‘and just learn to be good losers’. One cherished mentor even wrote to me to tell me that my chapter on football was disappointing: the repetition of innuendo and vague gut-feeling rather the scholarly presentation of evidence. Suitably chastised, I began to think that, perhaps, I was wrong to cast aspersions on the weird atmosphere of Italian football.

Then, like a bolt of lightning, came ‘Calciopoli’ (an echo of the previous bribery scandal of the 1990s, ‘Tagentopoli’). Within weeks of Prodi’s election victory, phone taps were made public which left no-one in any doubt as to the murky machinations of Lucky Luciano Moggi. It’s hard to render in English the sheer cynicism and vulgarity of his recorded phone conversations. Rather than the formal, slightly stilted Italian which is used in public or between important officials, these conversations were full of slang, first-name chumming and swear-words (‘the English are all shits’ says Moggi during one call). Moggi was revealed as a phone-slinger, a man with 6 handsets and 300 sim cards, a man who made an average of 416 calls a day and dialled or received 100,000 calls over a six-month period. What emerges from those conversations is that Moggi was a tireless dispenser of favours and threats. He could get a 23% discount on Fiat cars which he would then supply to anyone – a referee, linesman, policeman – who had helped his cause. He would arrange for children of financial investigators to get tickets to glamorous Juventus fixtures abroad. He would harangue television presenters about which refereeing decisions they should broadcast and which they should ignore (in return for expensive watches and exclusive interviews with star players). Even the most powerful politicians of the country would grovel to Moggi. The then Finance Minister, Domenico Sinisalco, was recorded phoning
Moggi to ask for a ‘piacerone’, a big favour. The Interior Minister called to ask the ‘lollipop man’ for help in saving his local team, Torres Sassari. A few weeks later the team won away for the first time in two years and the Interior Minister was on the phone again, stuttering about his hope that there may be ‘some little hand to save the team from the grave risks’ of relegation.