The Honored Society: A Portrait of Italy's Most Powerful Mafia (16 page)

Gratteri darted a quick glance across his laptop at me, as if he wanted to check that I was following him. The arrogance of the young ‘Ndranghetisti derived on the one hand from their wealth, and on the other from their knowledge of their de facto immunity from prosecution, he said. Over the last ten years, the Italian state had weakened in its struggle against the Mafia, even gradually relaxing its anti-Mafia legislation, culminating in the large-scale amnesty under the Prodi government. The problem wasn’t that 18,000 or 25,000 criminals were allowed to leave. The problem was a different one. Italians were increasingly convinced that there was a solution for everything, but there was no longer such a thing as a bail culture. For twenty-two years he had been investigating the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria: always the same families—he had arrested the same people three or four times for Mafia membership and international drug dealing, and after a short time they had been released again thanks to an amnesty or remission of punishment. It was easy to imagine that the justice system didn’t exactly gain in credibility in this way. Besides, these people weren’t normal, small-time criminals. Being an ’Ndranghetista or a member of Cosa Nostra was a lifestyle. A philosophy. These were people who had as four-year-olds experienced the police knocking at their doors, in search of an uncle, a brother, or their father, a cocaine dealer. For them, the policeman would always be a “spy,” an enemy who had to be fought against.

Every year he arrested between thirty and forty individuals who had been accused of drug dealing and who all came from the same village. Purely theoretically, these people would be
sentenced to twenty or thirty years’ imprisonment. You could imagine what that meant to a village of three or four thousand inhabitants—if the sentence was actually served. Instead, the punishment was reduced, thanks to various negotiations that were intended to shorten the process, from twenty to seven or eight years. With good behavior the prisoner could expect a further remission, and in the end an international cocaine dealer could be out of jail in five years maximum. And what was five years’ imprisonment compared with the prospect of importing a thousand kilos of cocaine? For one kilo of cocaine the ’Ndrangheta would pay 1,200 euros in Bogotá. The cocaine was cut and one kilo turned into four and a half. And a gram of cocaine would fetch 70 euros in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo.

“Work it out for yourself,” said Gratteri. And then he smiled, calmly, as if his calm was the result of long experience.

The Germans believed that the ’Ndrangheta didn’t exist in Germany, Gratteri said. It was a careless error to underestimate the situation, as had been the case over the past few years. Unlike in Italy, in Germany the mere suspicion of Mafia membership was not sufficient to justify an arrest, and spying on people in public places was not permitted. In a few years it could be too late for Germany. The German police didn’t have any of the tools required to pursue Mafia dealings. Without electronic eavesdropping, investigators in Italy would have been powerless. Germany, he said, had no time to lose. Because if a mafioso buys a hotel, a restaurant, or a stretch of road today, in a few years’ time no one will be able to prove that he bought the building with cocaine money.

It wasn’t just an ethical problem, Gratteri said, it was also a matter of the law of the marketplace. Unlike normal businessmen, who have to make sacrifices to put up a building, the Mafia
businessman has only the problem of justifying his money. Or protection money: if there are three supermarkets in his area that are all paying him protection money, and the fourth supermarket belongs to the Mafia, he doesn’t have to pay protection money, and for that very reason he can sell his products 2 or 3 percent cheaper. That’s unfair competition. And when free competition breaks down, the laws of the marketplace go awry and democracy breaks down as well. Because democracy means the possibility of choice. The same possibilities for everyone.

That was what he said. And as we spoke, the electricity failed once again in the Palace of Justice in Reggio Calabria.

Seven months after our meeting it became known that the public prosecutor Nicola Gratteri was being bugged when he met with detectives in the Palace of Justice to discuss current investigations. The bug used hadn’t been very technically sophisticated and had only been able to record conversations up to a distance of twenty meters. It was said.

S
ILVIO
B
ERLUSCONI AND
M
ARCELLO
D
ELL
’U
TRI

“J
UST ONE MORE PHOTOGRAPH
,”
SAYS
S
HOBHA
, “
OVER THERE
by the entrance.”

“I’m done,” says Letizia. She’s had enough of posing and being stared at by the passersby. Resigned, she lights another cigarette and walks to the other side of the Palace of Justice, where the armored limousines stand between the granite columns. Only anti-Mafia public prosecutors enjoy the privilege of being allowed to drive up the ramp of the Palace of Justice, right in front of the entrance.

“Let’s go,” says Letizia. “The Palace of Justice depresses me.”

“Me too,” says Shobha, and presses the shutter release.

When she’s packing her camera away again, we talk about how it is that every time we do interviews with public prosecutors here we have a serious-men-in-ties problem. There’s nothing
more depressing than a photograph of a serious-looking man sitting at his desk. Particularly since all the offices look the same:
carabinieri
calendars on the wall, a picture of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and paintings loaned from Palermo’s picture gallery—rural idylls with plowing peasants or grim-looking old women. Generally we would persuade the public prosecutors to pose for us on the roof of the Palace of Justice. But even that shot had worn itself out at some point. Photographically, the Palace of Justice doesn’t have much to offer, although its inner life is very informative. I’ve often sat in the corridors and watched the women defense counsels tottering along the marble granite with a metallic squeak. Until early afternoon, the court reporters prowl the corridors as well, sit outside the doors of the public prosecutors’ offices, listen to conversations, try to read the click of a public prosecutor’s tongue, to interpret a lawyer’s nod, spend hours waiting on the red plastic chairs outside the chief prosecutor’s office. All in the hope of being in the right place at the right time, finding that missing piece that might finally give a meaning to the puzzle made up of news, suspicions, hints, and rumors.

Perhaps one of my most remarkable meetings in the Palace of Justice was the one I had with Marcello Dell’Utri. Berlusconi’s right-hand man. The founder of Forza Italia. The senator. The Euro MP. The man accused of supporting the Mafia in Palermo. Which did nothing to dampen his mood that morning.

I had noticed Marcello Dell’Utri by chance in the corridors of the Palace of Justice. I had actually come here to talk to a public prosecutor about a Mafia boss who had gone into hiding. And then there was the senator, just standing there. The morning sun bathed the interior of the Palace of Justice in a mild
light, and Marcello Dell’Utri’s head was thrown back. He pouted as he smoked his cigar and watched as the smoke wafted away. The hearing was supposed to have started ages ago, but the judge was still missing. Only a few local journalists were following the trial. Not a single Italian television channel was covering the story, and barely any nonregional daily newspapers. The fact that Senator Marcello Dell’Utri, Berlusconi’s companion from the very first, Euro MP and Sicilian, was being accused of Mafia association in Palermo, attracted less attention than a television presenter’s move from Rai Uno to Canale 5.

The senator stood in the semicircle of his lawyers, bag-carriers, and confidants, smoking a cigar. His lawyers were smoking cigars as well. When Dell’Utri laughed, they laughed too. Dell’Utri was surprisingly short and wore an azure-blue shirt with a blue suit. His lawyers were also wearing azure-blue shirts. His face seemed to sag slightly at the edges, and his heavy eyelids gave his expression a certain veiled quality. The senator gripped people by the arm as he talked to them; he slapped people cordially on the back, shook hands, and hugged people. The lawyers coughed with laughter over each of his remarks, and gigglingly spluttered, “
Oh! Senatore!
” The cigar smoke hung quivering and blue above their heads, drifting away into the great expanse of the marble hall.

The public prosecutor who had led the trial in the first instance had told me that on the very first day, Marcello Dell’Utri had got to his feet during the prosecution speech and left the courtroom, saying: “I’m bored stiff.” I didn’t seriously imagine that he would answer my questions, but I didn’t want to reproach myself for not having tried. So I pushed my way past his bag-carriers, who eyed me suspiciously. When I stood in front
of him at last and talked to him about his Mafia indictment, he didn’t answer straightaway. He took a drag on his cigar, blew the smoke out, and said: “
Bellissima signora
, this trial is so boring, don’t waste your time on it. Go and look at the church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti instead.”

And true enough, the trial in the little courtroom lasted only a few minutes. There was hardly time to appreciate the dusty little fan that stood in the corner and to notice that a silver tassel was missing from the public prosecutor’s gown. As always, the microphones weren’t working. The trial had been adjourned over a formality.

A few months after our meeting, Senator Marcello Dell’Utri was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment and a lifelong exclusion from public office for supporting the Mafia. As usual in Italy, however, the sentence in the first instance had no effect on the defendant’s life: until the sentence has been confirmed in the second and third instances, Marcello Dell’Utri remains a free man. On average that takes ten years. And because the period of limitation begins with the start of the trial, like many other defendants in Italy, Marcello Dell’Utri can expect his crime to have lapsed when the final sentence is passed by the supreme court.

I will never be able to get used to this regulation. The three instances rule in Italian law is referred to as
garantista
: a law that respects the rights of the citizen. But it’s one that benefits the Mafia and corrupt politicians more than anyone else. I can’t get my head around the fact that someone whose guilt has been acknowledged by a court can go on strolling around the place unmolested and carry on being a politician—even in the European Parliament, as Marcello Dell’Utri has done. But equally it comes
as no surprise that a judicial reform abolishing this three instances rule would never be passed by the Italian parliament.

At the end of the eight-year trial the judges have taken it as read that Marcello Dell’Utri has worked as a mediator for the Sicilian Cosa Nostra since the 1970s, in the economy and in politics. His contact was Silvio Berlusconi. “The defendant has represented the interests of the Mafia in one of the biggest companies in the country; from the 1970s until the present day he was at the disposal of the Mafia, and made a more than considerable contribution to the consolidation and reinforcement of Cosa Nostra. He has favored [it] and received favors,” the judges wrote. The public prosecutors identified Dell’Utri as a kind of insurance agent for the Mafia: he drafted the contract with his client and ensured that it was precisely adhered to.

Immediately after the proclamation of the sentence, the then president of the chamber of deputies, Pier Ferdinando Casini, phoned up the defendant and assured him of his highest esteem and friendship, and also passed this on to the Italian public in an official note. And Berlusconi assured his friend Dell’Utri that he would put both hands in the fire for him. At the same time, Berlusconi warned the public prosecutors of Palermo not to play with fire. Berlusconi has never been terribly skilled in his use of metaphors.

Only a few short steps from the courtroom where I met Dell’Utri, in a corridor that, with its rows of discarded photocopiers and dusty swivel chairs, looked like a furniture storeroom for the next intake of Bosnian refugees, Public Prosecutor Antonio Ingroia, Dell’Utri’s accuser, had his office. A bearded man with an old man’s posture, even though he wasn’t all that old.

On his desk lay a silver wolf’s head as a paperweight; on the wall there were prints and the usual
carabinieri
calendars that every public prosecutor is given as a present. Public Prosecutor Ingroia told me how he had come to Rome with over a hundred questions in his luggage to hear Silvio Berlusconi take the witness stand. The prime minister evoked his right to be silent. And the public prosecutor regretted this as a missed opportunity to tell the truth.

The story of the friendship between the Milanese Silvio Berlusconi and the Sicilian Marcello Dell’Utri is documented in the twenty-five hundred pages of files produced by the Palermo public prosecutors’ office. Here one can read that the two men met in 1961, both in their early twenties, at Milan University. Marcello Dell’Utri began his professional life as secretary to Silvio Berlusconi, who was only four years his senior. This first collaboration lasted only a short time, however, and a year later Dell’Utri went to Rome, where he became sports director at a sports center run by Opus Dei. From Rome he returned to Palermo, where he became sports director of an athletics club at which he became acquainted with the mafiosi Vittorio Mangano and Gaetano Cinà. Mangano was later deployed as Cosa Nostra’s middleman at Berlusconi’s villa in Arcore. Gaetano Cinà worked as a bagman between the Mafia and Berlusconi, and at Christmas expressed his thanks for his successful collaboration with Berlusconi with ten kilos of cassata cake. But that time had not yet come. In 1970 sports director Dell’Utri became a bank clerk. A particularly skillful one. Soon he was responsible for the allocation of agricultural credits in the Sicilcassa bank.