[A-List] Italy: Berlosconi's mafia links

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Berlusconi implicated in deal with godfathers

Italian prime minister's party agreed to make life easier for jailed
criminals, says turncoat

Philip Willan in Rome
Thursday December 5, 2002
The Guardian

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, was in personal contact with
some of the mafia's most senior bosses, a major mafia turncoat has told
investigators in a deposition revealed yesterday.

Antonino Giuffre, a powerful boss who began collaborating with magistrates
in the summer, said the mafia decided to back Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia
party from its foundation in 1993, in exchange for help in resolving the
mafia's judicial problems.

The testimony was given last month to Palermo prosecutors, and published by
Italian newspapers yesterday.

On Tuesday, they submitted it as evidence to a court trying Marcello
Dell'Utri - a Forza Italia senator and close associate of Mr Berlusconi -
for alleged collusion with the mafia.

Last week, Mr Berlusconi refused to answer prosecutors' questions when the
court travelled to Rome to ask him about alleged links between his Fininvest
business empire and organised crime.

Mr Giuffre's evidence appears to add weight to the allegations of earlier
mafia pentiti ("penitents") who claimed that Mr Dell'Utri and Fininvest had
been dangerously close to Sicilian crime families.

Mr Giuffre, an aide to the mafia's supreme boss, Bernardo Provenzano, gave
himself up to police in April and has reportedly been updating
investigators' knowledge of the mafia's hierarchy and the evolving
relationship between politics and organised crime.

Mr Giuffre has reportedly told prosecutors that the mafia turned to Mr
Berlusconi's new party when its traditional contacts in the discredited
Christian Democrat party proved unable to protect its members from the
rigours of the law.

Worried godfathers sought assurances that their new political contacts would
soften harsh prison conditions reserved for mafia members, help them
overturn heavy prison sentences, and curtail the use of turncoat evidence
and the confiscation of their ill-gotten wealth, Mr Giuffre said.

This revolution in the justice system was expected to take 10 years, he
said.

The mafia, for its part, was required to abandon its assault on the state
and fade into the shadows.

Mr Giuffre said Mafia representatives who were in contact with Mr Berlusconi
included the Palermo bosses Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano - jailed for life
in 1994 for ordering the murder of an anti-mafia priest - and the allegedly
mafia-linked builder Giovanni Ienna.

Other channels of communication passed through a mafia boss employed as a
stable manager on Mr Berlusconi's country estate, and a Sicilian-born
financial police officer who moved from investigating Mr Berlusconi's tax
affairs to acting as his legal representative, he claimed.

Mr Giuffre said of the establishment of the alleged mafia-Fininvest
relationship: "Let's say, in all honesty, that it wasn't a very difficult
battle."

"We didn't find - at least, I didn't find - any obstacle along my path," he
said. "With God's help we officially embarked on the ship of Forza Italia."

Nando Dalla Chiesa, an opposition Daisy party senator, said Mr Giuffre's
declarations were not wholly new, but were nevertheless alarming.

The centre-left's muted response to their publication, he said, reflected
its desire to avoid being seen as exploiting Mr Berlusconi's legal
difficulties. "But we will continue to raise the issue of Berlusconi's
relations with this world," he said. "If these things were said about my own
party, I would be the first person to demand an explanation."

Mr Dell'Utri's lawyer, Enrico Trantino, dismissed the allegations as an
"anthology of hearsay". He said Mr Giuffre had perpetuated the trend that
every new turncoat would attack Mr Dell'Utri and the former prime minister
Giulio Andreotti in order to earn money and judicial privileges.

A Forza Italia spokesman, Sandro Bondi, said the publication of the new
claims threatened to poison political life in Italy. He told the Rome daily
La Repubblica: "If the entire political world does not this time show a
united front to oppose this disreputable manoeuvre, we should be very
worried about the future of democracy in Italy."

While Mr Berlusconi's supporters see the revelations as a judicial attempt
to interfere with the sovereignty of the electorate, his opponents are
equally convinced that democracy is at risk for as long as the levers of
power remain in Mr Berlusconi's hands.