10 July 2006

21 – The ‘political solution’

I’m continuing to publish some questions and answers from the book "Intervista su Tangentopoli" published by Laterza and edited by Giovanni Valentini.

GV: At this point, let’s try to draw a line between the past and the future. Wouldn’t it be the moment to relaunch your old idea of a “political solution” to make a final exit from Tangentopoli?
ADP: It’s a statement that I hear repeated often. But in my opinion it can mean everything or nothing. In fact in the real intentions of some people, it means just one thing: let’s have a great amnesty, let’s bury the thing, those who have given have given, those who have taken have taken.
What a shameful situation! This doesn’t mean that it is impossible to find a solution. At that time, we certainly did try to indicate some reasonable solutions but we were immediately accused (especially by Berlusconi and his followers) and then actually denounced for attempting to subvert the Constitution. This was really because we would have interfered with other State powers.
We need to remember what was happening at the time. It was 1994. We were right in the middle of Mani Pulite and, out of a sense of decency, it wasn’t possible to resolve everything by throwing in the sponge, to pretend that nothing had happened. On one hand it was necessary to sort things out with the justice system and on the other hand to give a breather to the economy and to get the contracts off the ground again, to get those big companies that were involved in the investigation back into economic activity.
Questions like this were put to us, the pool of magistrates, and we replied as citizens on a cultural level, in the universities, in debates and in conferences.
On 3 September 1994 in a conference organised by Studio Ambrosetti at Cernobbio, I spoke about a proposal that had been formulated with my colleagues. The proposal combined the respect for the rule of law and the needs of the economy. The idea was to have a transition time of 6 months to apply a special clause of “impunity” for those who confessed to a crime, gave back anything taken illegally and as a consequence they would not be allowed to hold public office.

GV: These were some of the points in the 'pacchetto Flick', the package proposed by the Minister of Justice in the Prodi government.
ADP: A few years later Flick picked up some of our ideas, but he wanted to go further, he wanted to arrive at a conditional amnesty.

GV: What exactly is the difference between the impunity clause and the conditional amnesty?
ADP: The ‘impunity clause’ means that the crime exists, it is admitted and recognised, but the main punishment is made good: but the obligation to give back anything taken illicitly remains. The amnesty, on the other hand, does not verify the facts, in some way it ignores the crime and practically cancels it and it also cancels any additional consequences: it really is a matter of throwing in the sponge. Precisely so as to avoid that consequence, Flick made the restitution of the damage a condition of the amnesty. That is why it was not passed.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli