14 August 2006

24 – Tangentopoli at its starting point

Today I’m concluding the publication of some questions and answers from the book "Intervista su Tangentopoli" published by Laterza and edited by Giovanni Valentini.

GV: It’s years since the beginning of Clean Hands. How do you now see the situation for Tangentopoli?
ADP: Clean Hands was a technical and judicial operation that produced a great reawakening of consciences. Many people took courage and many cultivated a hope for cleanliness. Then there was a block. The courage dwindled and the hope was extinguished.
Now however, it’s not useful to look back. It’s better to look forward. Tangentopoli was the tip of an iceberg. For the future, the fight against corruption must become part of the habits, of the culture, an ethical-social commitment. So that the phenomenon doesn’t recur, we first need to educate and to take precautions to prevent it. But the good example can only come from the top. This is why we need a new political class. We need one that can perform a leadership function for the whole society.
GV: Tangentopoli, 21 September 2000: Nine people were arrested in Milan. Among these was the Regional Councillor of Forza Italia Massimo Guarischi. This was for the scandal of the contracts for “after the floods”. And at the same time, at Palermo, the enquiry into the “red co-ops” revealed presumed relationships between the mafia and companies connected to the PCI and PDS. What does this mean, Senator Di Pietro, for you and for all of us?
ADP: It means unfortunately that we are back at the starting point. In some cases, even with the same people that were appearing in the first Clean Hands enquiry. But from this point now we must start to liberate Italy - from Milan to Palermo – of the disease of corruption.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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3 August 2006

23 – Change the faces of politics

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

GV: Do you not think that a certain level of corruption is physiological in all systems and in all regimes? Do you think that in Italy the phenomenon by now has become chronic?
ADP: Each person acts in the historic reality in which they live. It’s like the cannibal in the jungle, even the citizen in Tangentopoli adapts in the end. It’s human nature.
But however, it’s necessary to repeat that the principles of honesty and the respect for the law are the source of gain and development within a State that is democratic, free and solid. However, I don’t believe that corruption in Italy has been more serious and more widespread than in other countries.
With us, people paid simply to be allowed to sit at the table, independently of the effective benefit, without being sure of getting a result. And this is the reason why I talked about “environmental taxation” to say that it was corruption adopted by the system.

GV: OK, well then what can the possible remedies be?
ADP: In looking for remedies, Italy is behind others because of the current fragmentation of the party system. In this field however, it’s not enough to punish. Here it’s a matter of giving value to the opportunity and the usefulness of respecting the rules.
It’s necessary to reaffirm the principle that only by the transparency and the efficiency of the system can the freedom of the market be affectively guaranteed.
But the “moral question” cannot have a political and ideological basis. It’s not possible to divide society into goodness and badness, into the good and the bad, according to whether you are on the right or on the left. Indeed it is now a battle that is typically transversal. To put an end to this market of exchange, for the exchange of favours, we need a new system of controls – control of others – and control of self.
Above all we need to change the faces in politics. Then we need to create a pre-politics community. We need to collect together honest citizens, good people, and gentlemen.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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14 July 2006

22 - The Tangentopoli Commission

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

GV: What about the Parliamentary Commission on Tangentopoli, that we heard so much clamour about?
ADP: In the form it was originally proposed, it was the biggest political con trick of those years. Firstly, it wasn’t easy to see what use it could have: it was said that Parliament had to study the phenomenon but in fact the phenomenon was very well understood.
The truth is that they wanted to put the trials on trial, to put on trial the magistrates that had dared to investigate politicians. They wanted to investigate (and perhaps even accuse of having committed crimes) those who had investigated them.After the Lower House had already approved a text that would have been suicidal for the credibility of the institutions, luckily in the Senate they made certain modifications that put things back in place. This was also following my very firm stand and my public statements. But then this is why nothing actually was done.
GV: So in the end nothing was done?
ADP: No, considering that for the Berlusconian troops in Parliament the only reason they wanted the Parliamentary Commission on
Tangentopoli was to put the magistrates in a position of being accused.
Once the text of the draft law no longer allowed for that tool to be used, they allowed its parliamentary progress to finish.
And while doing this, among other things, they found friends also on the benches of the Centre Left, starting from the heirs of the Socialist Party. For the Sdi {Socialisti democratici italiani} members, this blessed Commission seemed to be the conditio sine qua non to give their support to the second D’Alema government.
This is why they made an enormous noise. But then, D’Alema went and Giuliano Amato arrived and the socialists became part of the government. They too managed to fit nicely into the comfortable armchairs of power and no one has talked about the Parliamentary Commission on.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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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
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6 July 2006

20 – Tangentopoli is not finished

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

GV: However, it’s a fact that corruption continues and that Tangentopoli is not finished. What’s the moral that we can see there?
ADP: Good. That’s true. It means that the justice system has failed but that’s not the failure of the Clean Hands project.
And the justice system has failed not really because the magistrates have arrested innocent people but above all because of this political class. I don’t want to hide the fact that even among the magistrates, as among any group of people there are idol ones and visionaries. The political class embodies the interests of private individuals, those of the trial and those that are personal to members of the Pole as well as the political interests of social normalisation that is headed up by the Centre Left.
In recent years, all the energies have been focused on making legislation that favours the defendants rather than towards identifying the best tools that can be used in trials to ascertain the truth.
In parallel with the creation of rules about the rights of defence for the defendant, there should have been work on improving the way a trial can be concluded by reducing the degrees of judgement and making it a norm that alternative rites can be applied. The judicial offices should have been given the means, the tools and the trial reforms so that the truth can be reached rather than impunity. There should have been new norms dealing with crimes against the public administration and about the phenomenon of corruption. Above all the certainty of punishment should have been made effective so that those who misbehave know that they will finish up in prison and will stay there. In a prison that is more human and more decent, yes, but still a prison for those whom crime is the meaning of life.
These and many others should have been the objectives and the actions that the Centre Left government should have set out to achieve as soon as they were installed in Palazzo Chigi. They should have done that rather than chasing after the continual requests and unsustainable compromises of the current Berlusconian.

GV: But is it not true, senator Di Pietro, that you had too much faith in the “judicial way” to the Second Republic and that today we are paying the consequences?
ADP: Ah yes. We’ll see that the fault is not of the one who committed the crimes but of the one who discovered them. We need to get a full understanding on this point. We didn’t carry out our investigation to arrive at a Second Republic using the judicial way.
The Second Republic could have been the consequence resulting from the verification of the facts about the crimes committed by the protagonists of the First Republic. Let’s not mix up cause and effect.
The presupposition of the investigations was the verification of who was guilty before the law. The result is that the new political class, instead of taking on the need to celebrate the trials, they got busy approving norms to ensure the impunity of those who should have been tried.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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27 June 2006

19 - Good bye to the magistracy/2

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

GV: And whatever was it that happened in a few months that made you go back over the steps you had taken?
ADP: While I was on “leave of absence”, without even calling me in, the inspectorate of the Ministry of Grace and Justice asked for the inquiry into Di Pietro to be archived. That is what I had been asking for from the beginning. That is what should have been done.
The accusations against me didn’t seem to be credible from the evidence presented. In fact after a nightmare lasting two years, everything ended up in a bubble of soap. And this is where I happened to meet up with Silvio Berlusconi for the second time and for the final time. It was the Spring of 1995, if I remember it was February or March. He was no longer President of the Council. Dini was leading the government.
Berlusconi let me know that he wanted to see me, because anyway I was not in the magistracy and we could continue the discussion that was interrupted a year earlier. At that time, we were two people who could meet each other like normal citizens, without problems of incompatibility.
I couldn’t be reproached because as a magistrate I had issued a document inviting him to appear before me…
The encounter lasted just long enough for us to each realise that we were not made for each other…
After that I discovered from the Brescia documents that while he was trying to capture me with these proposals, Berlusconi was working in parallel to convince D’Adamo to accuse me, to make him say that I had favoured Pacini Battaglia for a good few thousand million.
Anyway about two months later, on April 1 1995, the Brescia enquiry about me was started. This was the beginning of a long Calvary in judicial offices and above all a squalid “killing” in the newspapers and the TV channels especially those in the Berlusconi sphere.

GV: How many trials did you have to go through?
ADP: There were 27 accusations against me in 10 trials. And I was always absolved with the same wording: “The fact did not exist”.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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23 June 2006

18 - Good bye to the magistracy/1

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

GV:...Well in the end, what was the real reason that made you resign from the magistracy?
ADP: I decided to leave the role of prosecutor so that I could defend myself better. With my hands free and without the responsibility of carrying out investigations, I should have had a better possibility to fight against the calumnies and the defamations that were coming thick and fast against me. And I did manage to do this.
I wanted to bring home my honour at all costs. It was the only thing that interested me. In my heart I said: “as soon as I have concluded the Enimont enquiry, I will go. I absolutely must save Mani Pulite. My story as a man and as a magistrate is in that.”
What would have been left of the symbolic value of the enquiry if I too had been convicted? Those who had organised my delegitimisation were not at all interested in my personal position. They were motivated by having the possibility of saying: “See. We are all equal. You see, we are all guilty, no one is guilty. Let’s put an end to this affair and then we can resign ourselves. That’s how the world turns round.”

GV: That’s why on 6 December 1994 you took off your toga in the courtroom at the end of the interrogation of Cusani and you left the magistracy…

ADP: Take care. Let’s not get confused. On 6 December 1994 I didn’t resign from the magistracy. I took leave of absence. It was six months later in June 1995 that I resigned.
My initial intention was not to leave the magistracy, but to go though the procedures against me and then to return to the magistracy. That’s why I made a formal request to the CSM to be given leave of absence like many other colleagues in the judiciary or in Parliament when they have ministerial or institutional responsibilities.
It was senator Francesco Cossiga who advised me to become a consultant for the Parliamentary Committee on Slaughters. At his suggestion, I got in contact with the president Giovanni Pellegrino and that’s how I started my new job.
For a few months I was in “stand by” at the Senate and I was mostly busy with drafting a weighty report about the “Uno bianca” event involving the kidnappings and murders committed by police officers. In the meantime I wanted to see what happened…

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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18 June 2006

17 - Berlusconi’s Empire

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

GV: However, it’s certain that Berlusconi had an incredible number of confiscations and searches.
ADP: But it’s also true that he has a constellation of about a thousand operating companies that are effectively headed up by him. This is said by his brother Paolo whilst being interrogated in August 1994: “We are a holding made up of all the companies, but they are all making reference to our family and the one who takes the decisions in the end is Silvio.”
So it’s not the fault of the Milan judges or of the Palermo judges if every time that there’s an investigation into one of these companies, they end up investigating the person who is in fact the one in overall control. It’s not the fault of the judges that they have a thousand companies. How many Italians have a thousand companies that are headed up by a single family?

GV: There won’t be a thousand “black holes” , a thousand mysterious objects…
ADP: The whole of Berlusconi’s empire came about in a really unusual way. To get an idea about the evolution of the companies in the group, there’s a document to be read from cover to cover. This was prepared by Francesco Giuffrida, an employee of Banca d'Italia and it was presented to the prosecutors in Palermo. This was done at the request of the antimafia directorate of the area in the course of the criminal investigation n.6031/94.
So that each of us can understand the origins, it’s enough to look at the first few lines: “… 19 June 1978 'Holding Italiana 1' was created in Milan. The other companies had the same name but they each had an identifying sequence number (2, 23). The start up capital was 20 million for each one. (thus more than 40 million in cash was put into the companies at that time.) The founding partners were Minna Armando (accountant, putting in 2 million for each company) and Crocitto Nicla (housewife, putting in 18 million for each company). Ms Crocitta was named as the sole administrator when each company was set up. However it can be deduced from talking to the witnesses that the sole effective owner of the companies was Silvio Berlusconi …”
So I ask: why does an entrepreneur need to use these systems of cover right from the start? And then, why did Berlusconi make such a massive use of off-shore companies? Certainly, the law permits it. But then if you want to be a top level politician it’s obligatory that you explain to the Italians what all these companies are used for.
In fact, it’s not enough that you explain. You must also show the documentation and you can no longer behave as you did when you opposed the foreign rogatory letters that were written by the magistrates. Otherwise your credibility disappears

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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13 June 2006

16 - Berlusconi

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

GV: Even Silvio Berlusconi frequently complained that he was persecuted and sustained that his companies were scrutinised more than any others. Did you focus on him because he was a friend of Craxi? Is this why you concentrated so decidedly on him?
ADP: Focus on him? We gave much more attention to other people. It’s not true that we investigated a single company and not others. Berlusconi was one of those I investigated for 3 or 4 cases of corruption. For these he was convicted and then on appeal he was allowed off on the grounds of “prescrizione” {time delay too long}. We arrested and interrogated dozens of managers and directors of Fiat, even at the top levels like Romiti, Mattioli and many others.
At Fiat we discovered about 40,000,000,000 in bribes. This was the so-called 'tesoretto'. In Berlusconi’s case we took action at the start for only 300,000,000 in bribes. Then as the investigation proceeded we discovered many other things, starting from the financial transactions in the Iberian account that finished up in his “off-shore holdings”.
However he started to shout out straight away and he never wanted to accept the trial process. Unlike him, those in Fiat and many other business people presented their own reasons and those of their companies in their trials, as I also did when I too was investigated.
For example, the former CEO of Fiat, Cesare Romiti ended up in front of the Supreme Court for false accounting, but he always maintained a behaviour of loyalty in relation to the magistrates and the trial proceedings relating to him never had a particularly high profile in the press.

GV: In fact, are you saying that Berlusconi put into practice a specific communication strategy?
ADP: Well, it’s clear to me that he chose an approach to the trial that was different from many others in his position.
In fact, he used the same strategy as his friend Craxi: “No one can judge me and whoever does that is either a communist or a plotter.”
Like Craxi, Berlusconi decided to attack and he kept to the line that the action taken by the magistrates was a political action against him and not the obligatory action in line with criminal proceedings taken by magistrates who had decided to carry out their duty.
His action was a true media campaign with massive spending and massive use of personnel. Using the TV channels and newspapers that he owned, he managed to sow the seed of doubt in public opinion. In the public imagination, he managed to transform the defendants into victims and to change their judges into attackers.
The result is what we can all see. Everyone has lost their memory about what happened in the years of the First Republic and already there are those who say “it was better when it was worse”. A great education for future generations! And this is the statesman who should be leading us in the Second Republic? Do me a favour!

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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11 June 2006

15 -Craxi

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

GV: How many times did you meet Craxi before the trial? Is it true that there was a certain “feeling” between you and him?
ADP: I had 4 or 5 investigational interviews with Craxi. Let’s call them interrogations as they were all recorded and they took place in the presence of his lawyers. At first they were conducted in Amato’s home. Not President Amato but Nicol� Amato, the former director of the prisons who having become a lawyer had taken on his defence. Later they were carried on in a building of the Secret Services in Rome.

It was there that Craxi told me about his information in relation to the financing of the PCI by the Soviet Union. It was there that he told me about a recording, made shortly before in his office relating to the lawyer avvocato Pezzi who is now dead. At the time of the recording Pezzi was the defence lawyer for Luigi Carnevale who was a leading member of the PCI in Milan he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Milan Metro and had confessed to bribes that had circulated in that environment.
I used Craxi’s information to proceed against the members of the Communist Party, but the “soviet” documentation referred to distant financing that was so far back in time that it was already irreversibly “prescritto”.
In relation to that it would be interesting to understand why Craxi, when he was President of the Council, and thus a public official, why he didn’t hand over those documents to the magistrates. At that time the facts could have been followed up. Ah, the blessed first Republic!
Even the recording of the interview with avvocato Pezzi didn’t contain important information about specific people. It turned out that Pezzi had told Craxi generic facts received from Carnevale, according to whom even the PCI was involved in bribes.
But even we knew this, and we had arrested Carnevale and had interrogated a number of his party companions. And then we certainly couldn’t use the tape, recorded secretly, that contained declarations made by a lawyer about one of his clients.

GV: On a more personal level, how do you remember those meetings with the socialist leader?
ADP: I still remember that Craxi was smoking. He smoked and smoked. There were hours and hours of dialogue, of confrontations, of discussion about soviet funds to the Italian Communist Party (the PCI) and how the PCI was involved in the bribes.
He went round and round on these topics like a falcon on the prey. However he never came down to capture it. He never came down to concrete facts. He didn’t give names, dates, circumstances, provide evidence, except for topics that were so far back in time that it was no longer possible to follow them up as crimes.
More than talking to me, I had the impression that he was intending to send messages to the political world. I couldn’t allow myself to be involved in his game of suspects. After a bit, his minuet finished.
Craxi realised that I was not useful to his tactic and that I wouldn’t follow him in his performance. And so he started to say that not even I wanted to investigate the communists and that the Milan Prosecution operated double standards.
But blessed Craxi (his name was Benedetto and he certainly seems to have been blessed)! If you knew something about facts that could still be brought to trial, why didn’t you say loud and clear? Then I would have been able to show you how I could carry out investigations!

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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7 June 2006

14 – The PSI

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

GV: Let’s change direction. On the one hand you have been accused of having been particularly careful in relation to the PCI-PDS, on the other hand they have said that you waged political persecution against the PSI.
ADP: Even this story of the PSI can be cleared up once and for all. It was not our choice that in the affairs that we were investigating the PSI was hit more than the others.
It’s simply a question of the geographical area that was within our jurisdiction. I am convinced that in the same conditions of time and place – the famous coincidence of circumstances that we talked about at the beginning – if instead of in Milan, the pool had been working in Naples, it would have been in the position to do a feast of investigations into the big names in the zone, perhaps into Pomicino or De Lorenzo, De Mita or Di Donato.
We didn’t investigate Craxi for personal idiosyncrasies, but because our work as magistrates was rooted in Milan, in a reality where he had a strong presence. Everyone knows: Milan was the stronghold of Craxian power. We couldn’t simply pretend not to see that.

GV: However from Milan, you arrived as far as Rome….
ADP: Yes, certainly. It’s true that we also investigated the other parties and the leaders of the other parties. But we investigated them because they were involved in investigations that started within the Milan jurisdiction.
It’s not my fault that Craxi had his offices in Piazza del Duomo. It’s not my fault that Milan was the centre of his interests. It’s not my fault that he was involved in the Milan Metro, nor is it my fault that many business people came to Milan to pay the bribes to the administrative secretary of the PSI, Balsamo, in Craxi’s office in Piazza del Duomo.
Let’s not invert the terms of the issue. Craxi used an expression: “Milan to drink” (Milano da bere). It’s not my fault if it was he that drunk more than others.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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5 June 2006

13 - Red Cooperatives

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

GV: Apart from the personal stories and tragedies, in your investigation, did you find out how the parties shared out the money from the bribes? Was there a rule, some criteria? Those opposing Mani Pulite make out that you didn’t inquire into the PCI {Italian Communist Party} with the same energy that you used for the DC {Christian Democrats} or the PSI {Italian Socialist Party}.

ADP: That’s completely false. Whoever had the face to say something so idiotic is either ignorant (in the technical sense of the word – someone who doesn’t know what is in the trial documents), or has been led astray by the psychological bombing from the usual mass media and TV channels owned by the bosses.
Or still further it might be someone who explicitly in bad faith is talking like that for personal gain or for partisan reasons.
Let’s say straight away that the political system divided the bribes into 4 parts: one went to the DC, on to the PSI, one went to the other powers of the 5-party government in that particular zone (and they then had to divide it up among themselves according to their political weight in each formation) and the last part went to the PCI, usually in the form of work to the Cooperatives that operated in the orbit of the party.
And sometimes with payments of real cash bribes in envelopes, for which we have always taken action each time that we discovered them, in spite of any presumed favouritism.

GV: What does it mean exactly to say “in the form of work”?
ADP: The red Cooperatives didn’t accept money or bribes. In fact, they may have paid them. And in fact their lawyers, when incriminated were considered to be corrupters and not corrupted.
A particular commercial activity was guaranteed to them: that is to say, purchases, contracts. This is the substantial difference. This is why for certain contracts the Co-ops were not brought to trial in the same way. Formally there was no crime. This is simply because they received an order to perform work as a sub-contractor or in an association of companies and the work was carried out effectively.
There was thus an authentic return for the money and the interests of the party were to provide work for the working class.
The accusation against the pool {the team of magistrates} that they favoured the PCI has no foundation neither in heaven nor on earth. Where we found wads of cash offered as bribes we did not hesitate for a moment to bring to justice those responsible. It is not our fault that the PCI often used a different method that produced agreement, a method that can be morally questionable but that is criminally irrelevant.
And we have to keep to the law, not to the Gospels!

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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31 May 2006

12 - Gardini

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

GV: What was the trigger that made Gardini take his own life?

ADP: An act of pride. His action must have been an act of pride. This is the idea that came to me. Gardini passed a whole night knowing that the following day he would be arrested. A night in which he understood that his whole world was about to finish. This was something we had not reckoned with. I hadn’t, nor had his lawyers.
Up until that time, we judges knew only a small segment of the Enimont proceedings. We didn’t by then know exactly to whom the 150,000,000,000 of the maxi-bribe went. In fact we didn’t even know of the existence of a bribe of that size.
We didn’t even know of the existence of the missing 63,000,000,000 that Cusani said he had given back to Gardini: whether it was true or not, it’s certain that someone must have taken this money.
However Gardini knew this and more. He knew about the relationship between Montedison and the Rome constructor Bonifaci. He probably knew about the intrigues surrounding the accountant Melpignano and about the buying and selling of property Montedison-Bonifaci and so on.
There was a mountain of stuff he should have come to tell the magistrates. Thus I believe that his has an instinctive reaction. I believe that it was not meditated, that it was a desperate gesture, a challenge, a final clamorous act of a great protagonist on the scene. Of course, up until a few minutes before, he was getting ready to come to the Procura {Prosecutor’s office}.

GV: However, the pistol was found on an item of furniture, far away from the body. Have you never had any suspicion about the suicide?

ADP: No. Gardini’s was a real suicide. I’m certain of that. I arrived straight away, a few minutes after the death. Because as I said, I was waiting for him in my office at Palazzo di Giustizia {Palace of Justice}, at 500 metres from his house.
And I could listen to the witnesses straight away. There were the service personnel. As soon as the domestic staff realised what had happened, while attempting to resuscitate him, they moved the pistol and put it on a small table.

GV: Did someone admit that they had moved the pistol?

ADP: Yes. It’s been proved. It’s all proved. My colleague Licia Scagliarini of the Procura di Milano {Milan Prosecutor’s office} conducted an investigation within the investigation. Everything was reconstructed. Even the final phone calls made by Gardini using the telephone accounts.
...
I really believe that his was a sudden and desperate action by a gambler who realised that he had lost the final game and who felt he had arrived at the end of the road.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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29 May 2006

11 - Suicides

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

GV: You’ve said that during the Mani Pulite {Clean Hands} investigation you didn’t make use of abuse or threats but unfortunately some people did commit suicide. The first one was the socialist parliamentarian, Sergio Moroni, then the president of ENI, Gabriele Cagliari and finally Raul Gardini. Do you not feel that you had some responsibility for all this? Have you never felt any remorse for these suicides?

ADP: This story of suicides is very delicate. Let’s consider these three cases. It’s in examining these three cases that we can see how such tragic, serious and desperate facts were used to delegitimise Mani Pulite.
Bettino Craxi started off in relation to Moroni. Let’s read the letter that Moroni wrote before taking his own life. That letter did nothing to save the party.
What did Moroni say? In essence he said: ‘I’m committing suicide because I’ve got into a tangle in such a way that I can’t understand anything any more; because I’ve finished up in a mechanism in which I feel I’m being squeezed; because I feel oppressed by the party system and the investigation system…’
But for all that you cannot blame the investigator, anyone doing their duty as a magistrate. Be careful: Moroni was not in prison, nor was he about to go to prison. He found out that there were investigations relating to him and he collapsed, not because anyone was holding him, but because he realised that his name had come out in the open.
The truth is that inside the parties, certain people were used in such a way that at the end, it was they who felt shame. They felt the weight of their responsibility to such a point that they had to finish it. No one was accused for vendetta. No one has suffered threats or violence.

GV: However, Gabriele Cagliari was in prison when he committed suicide…

ADP: The Cagliari case was even more incredible, because his suicide has always been put down to Di Pietro and the team of magistrates; but at that time Cagliari was not being held in prison by us.
He was part of the Mani Pulite investigation, but we had already released him. Cagliari was in prison because he was responsible for crimes of corruption and other crimes that had plenty of evidence. No further action was taken on those after his death for that very reason.
But he wasn’t innocent and in fact his wife then returned the money that he had hidden in secret current accounts in Switzerland. We had found them and we had blocked them when the money was still deposited abroad. There’s proven evidence of his guilt.
Then, however, we freed him, because the needs for precaution were no longer there. In the meantime other restrictive measures were applied to him by other judges and he had to stay in prison. Those crimes too had much associated evidence and his accomplices were then also found guilty.
When Cagliari died he was no longer detained as a result of the action of the Mani Pulite team!

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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10 - The ‘rattling of handcuffs’

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

GV: You have established that you didn’t use preventive incarceration as a way of getting a confession from a suspect. But during the Mani Pulite {Clean Hands} enquiry you were also accused of using threats and violence towards suspects. Can you frankly exclude ever having jangled a set of handcuffs in front of the eyes of a suspect?

ADP: Apart from the fact that none of us actually had a set of handcuffs available, I can exclude it even in a metaphorical sense. Our method of investigation was not designed to force the willingness of the suspect; rather it was designed to get consent. What we were aiming for in fact was to get the defendant to work alongside us, to get their complicity. Today I smile bitterly to see so many former lawyers who make useless attacks against the Milan pool {the team of magistrates in Milan} and I still remember some of them when they came to the Procura {office of the prosecutors} to persuade myself or one of the team to receive their clients as they couldn’t hold out any longer. They had an attack of “overflowing speech”. They were great lawyers who now pretend to have forgotten. Perhaps they’ve even become parliamentarians on the Left or the Right and perhaps they attack the magistracy, one day yes and the next as well. Whereas at that time they were queuing up to bring their clients to us.

GV: To whom was President Scalfaro referring, in his inaugural speech at the end of 1997 when he criticised the magistrates for the ‘rattling of handcuffs’?

ADP: There’s no doubt that he intended to refer to us, but it’s just as sure that he made a mistake. Scalfaro, President Scalfaro. I am still perplexed, very perplexed about this way he had of behaving. Sometimes he was supportive and at other times he was critical. He had an attitude like that of Pontius Pilate in relation to Mani Pulite. I also remember that straight after I had resigned as a magistrate, I was called on a number of occasions to the Quirinale {official residence of the President of the Republic}. But the President wasn’t much interested in expressing his understanding nor his solidarity. He was more concerned to understand what I intended to do.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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23 May 2006

9 - The mafia

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

ADP: But even the business people when they had contracts in the South, they were very reluctant to speak about how things were conducted in the market for bribes down there.

GV: Were they working for the mafia?
ADP: No, not for the mafia as such. Everyone makes this error. The mafia doesn’t run businesses, in the sense that they take hold of the tools to construct roads and bridges. The mafia prefers to gather the profits from the businesses by obliging the business people to give them a percentage with the excuse of insuring the so-called “pax sociale” {social peace} in the territory. Basically, for contracts from Naples down, and especially in Sicily, the business people that we interrogated responded: ‘No, I can’t tell you. I prefer to go to prison.’ What’s the difference? In the Centre-North, the illicit agreement is between the system of businesses and the political party system; in the Centre-South however the illicit winning of contracts passes through a third party: the local business that is connected with the mafia. In Sicily, the politician does not directly collect the money from the bribes and it’s not the business person that pays directly. When there’s a big contract to be gained in the zone subject to the influence of mafia and organised crime, the national system of businesses knows that they have to go to work in a hostile territory. This can also be seen in the records of the statements made. Thus they don’t go to have a dialogue with the politician, they go to negotiate with the business association where they can find the local businessperson who guarantees the pax.
What’s the agreement? The local businessperson says: ‘You don’t simply promise to give me the 8 to 10 per cent of the profits related to the work that you are sub-contracting to me; you must also give me that “quid pluris” {plural amount} that I have to distribute partly to the local political system and partly to the mafia system that protects (that is the term used) the territory.’ This generally is how things are conducted.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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19 May 2006

8 – Arrested for Hours

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

GV: So you started to put people in prison to force them to talk.

ADP: Nothing could be further from the truth. And even the Corte di Cassazione {Supreme Court} confirmed this by turning down the appeals against the actions of the pool {the team of magistrates}. Almost all of our arrest requests had one characteristic: they were “ad horas” {for a number of hours}. Often the person under interrogation went to prison in the morning and was out by the evening. At the most they were in prison for a few days. Our arrests weren’t designed to keep them in prison for long. The motivation for them was that at that precise time the businessperson could do one of two things: He could disturb the evidence or he could come to us and confess. Once I had discovered that in your company you’ve got slush funds, once you know that I know your current account details, once it has been established that you have been part of a corruption mechanism for some time, you become a person who is socially dangerous because for years you have been carrying on this activity and you can thus take action to disturb the evidence.

GV: But why did you let people out after just a few hours?

ADP: Because, once there were there, we called for them and
we said: ‘This is the situation of the judicial investigation relating to you and these are the dangers that you could disturb the evidence needed to prove the case against you, this is clear, beyond discussion, because for twenty years you have been doing this activity and obviously you have relationships with many people who could be willing to do you a favour by hiding the evidence or by continuing this criminal activity.’
‘Oh no’ they said, ‘No? OK Explain why not. How can you convince me? Speak. Confess.’ Our objective was not to put people in prison to make them confess. It was to free them as soon as possible because after their statements, the corrupters under investigation were no longer in a credible position in the eyes of their accomplices. So by interrupting the chain of silence, we could justify the arrests. In this way we could demonstrate that there was no longer a danger that the evidence could be disturbed and that the crime would not be continued or repeated

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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18 May 2006

7 - Slush Funds

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

GV: So false accounting became for you the key of the problem….
ADP: When an entrepreneur hands over a wad of money to a public official it’s not his own money. It’s not from his own pocket. As much as he pulls out, that amount is coming from the company. If a bribe is to be added to a contract in which a consortium of companies are involved, the entrepreneur has to get the money from all the members of the association. There is thus a fraudulent activity of finding and collecting the funds for ends other than the normal ones of the company: so to be clear, the bribes, cannot be anything other than from slush funds.

GV: However, usually these funds are hidden in the company accounts. What system is used for finding the bribes?
ADP: That’s true. Usually the formal documentation is correct. The invoice for consultancy from Giovanni or Nicola is correct. The invoice for a false purchase is correct. However what’s needed is to see if there’s the content. If the amount paid corresponds to work done, a service or a product supplied.

GV: How did you discover this?
ADP: I thought: Let’s go to the enterprises that are the most representative, the ones that deal with the Public Administration and operate abroad where they carry out their activity off-shore so as not to leave a trace in Italy. So I chose the biggest Italian companies of this type and I went with my police to look at all the details of the accounts and the income tax declarations. Then I entered the data into computer systems. It was meticulous work carried out in the registers of companies, The Chambers of Commerce and the tax offices.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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16 May 2006

6- Interrogation in Context

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

GV: Then it’s possible to say that Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) was carried out using ICT.
ADP: The Clean Hands investigation didn’t just use ICT: it is the ICT investigation! The investigation was completely computerised to such a point that it allowed me to adopt another expedient that was fundamental to the success of the enquiries and for which in the end I finished up on trial: the interrogation in context.

GV: Is that the interrogation of a number of people in different locations all at the same time?
ADP: No, no. In fact I didn’t have more than one base. I didn’t have great resources and thus I had to get organised on my own. In a single room, we set up about a dozen personal computers to interrogate witnesses or the people under investigation. In front of each computer there was an officer of the Carabiniere or the Police or the Finance Police.

GV: That way, during the interrogation, each person couldn’t hear what the others said?
ADP: No, at least, not very well. Of course it was what we got by with. Certainly, it would have been better to have had all that in different rooms, perhaps using fibre optics, but we are talking of that time…

GV: And in this room with a dozen work positions, could you control everything through a single computer?
ADP: At the most advanced stage of the investigation, yes I could, but only partly. At the beginning we allowed those being interrogated to think so: my collaborators managed to ask the same questions to everyone because I had trained them in advance. Many believed that I could read all the responses at the same time on the video.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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15 May 2006

5 - ICT and Clean Hands

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

GV: What were the external circumstances that opened up the route for the Clean Hands investigation?
ADP: Among the circumstances apart from the proceedings, there was ICT. In the early 1990’s ICT started to be used for public administration. And in my work as a magistrate with the Procura di Milano, I had acquired an ICT culture built up earlier.

GV: How did you get it? Did you do a course or were you self taught?
ADP: No – no course. I’ve never done a computer course. My computing culture came from trial and error. It came from an old passion for electronics and its application. I have a diploma in electronics. And when I’m accused of not knowing Italian and of not having gone to a High School I reply: Yes I confess. I did an electronics diploma in my free time while I was working. I haven’t studied classics. I did the electronics diploma because I was interested in the subject. Later this diploma allowed me to take part in the competition to get a job with the Military Air Force. I worked for the Ministry of Defence for 6 or 7 years. (I didn’t work for the Secret Services as some have said.) I was a technician in the laboratory dealing with first generation computers and with electronic devices. In Milan, at Linate airport, with the Division of aeronautical construction, I was testing gyroscopes and other instruments. I learned how to use the binary language of electronics, and then I transferred this competitive advantage to my work as a magistrate.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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11 May 2006

4- Enimont’s Slush Funds

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

GV: We were talking about the enquiry into Enimont’s slush funds and about Falcone’s suggestions about the letters rogatories.
ADP: Yes, at the time the Enimont trial was going on, at the beginning of October 1994, an important event happened that was not noticed at the time. I managed to bring Giorgio Tradati into a public hearing in the courtroom. He was a friend of Craxi who acted on his behalf and he made a series of revelations including the story about the Northern Holding account. It is a generator account (or in the language of those using Swiss Banks on behalf of others whose names must not appear, a transit account) that was later discovered to be connected in some way to the All Iberian accounts – the ones that demonstrated the economic relationship between Craxi and Berlusconi, just to be clear, even though this was denied repeatedly on numerous occasions. But how did I get Tradati into the courtroom? I didn’t invent it as a surprise theatrical event. How did he get to the courtroom that morning? Evidently something must have happened from the point of view of the enquiry. It must be that some crack had opened up.

GV: What’s the explanation of the mystery?
ADP: No. There’s nothing mysterious about it. The situation of Tradati is just an example in the Enimont-Craxi-Berlusconi case to explain how I used the learning that I had received from Falcone about letters rogatories. I was taking action in relation to corruption and false accounting. In relation to those potential crimes I got to know that there had been an interchange of money between Swiss banks, but I didn’t know who the beneficiary was. I didn’t know who had received the money. Until then, until the Strasburg Convention, in these cases there was the investigative 'coitus interruptus’. It had never been possible to get to the bottom of things to trace the movement of money in foreign countries. I contacted Swiss colleagues Perraudin and Crochet in Geneva: “I’m investigating corruption in this affair: someone has paid in money to this particular current account; but he doesn’t want to tell me” On the basis of the Strasburg Convention against money laundering, they are obliged to respond to me.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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9 May 2006

3- The Isolation of the Milan Team of Magistrates

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

GV: Let’s continue with the collection of causes that led up to the inquiry.
ADP: OK. However let’s start off with the supposition that everything that has been written about the 'grande vecchio' {great old one} - at times the CIA, the KGB, the Church, The Christian Democrats, the Communists and so many more – is the biggest historical falsity in the world. Behind me, behind the “pool” {the team of magistrates}, there was no power, no occult force. Externally we gave an image of power, but the truth is that at that time we were dying of fear. I still remember the first parliamentarian to be investigated, Remo Gaspari. I went to the Prefecture to speak to him in the presence of the Prefect. I had to agree the boundaries of the interrogation, the questions that I could ask and those that I couldn’t. For the fifteenth or twentieth parliamentarian that we interrogated, the colleague Piercamillo Davigo looked at me and I said: “Is that it? If these are the parliamentarians, this is a job that anyone could do!”

Really, we imagined that they would have done so much preparation…. Many parliamentarians, and above all many State employees with high-level titles in the public companies, didn’t know anything. And they didn’t even know the meaning of an “avviso di garanzia” {notification of judicial investigation} and at times some didn’t even know the terms of their own job.

And I said to myself: the day they discover that there is no one behind us, these people will pass over us like a tractor. And in fact, when they realised that we were alone, that we were in the company simply of the wish to take swift action and to do it well (We were like surgeons who had to use their instruments fast so as to be able to sew up the wound.), they got out the tractor and passed over us.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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8 May 2006

2- The Lobby of 'who has passed away'

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

GV: Let’s return to Mario Chiesa and the scandal about Pio Albergo Trivulzio that was the trigger for the Mani Pulite enquiry.
ADP: I heard this talked about for the first time in 1987. Then, a couple of years later, the journalist, Nino Leoni wrote an article for “Il Giorno” in which he denounced the existence of a lobby for the “dear departed” in which funerals were always assigned to the same Funeral Directors with the accusation that the directors of the company were making excess profits from the charges. That caused an action for defamation. As I explained earlier, I had already been aware how the functions of self-protection of the corrupt functioned. I wanted to get to the bottom of this.
GV: How did you go about it?
ADP: Something inside me said: I have the duty to take action. Is it true what this journalist says? Or is it false? If it’s false, then its defamation. But it could be true and in that case it is abuse of power by a public official. Thus in the register of crime notification, I noted both possibilities. I asked to be allowed to tap the phones of all the suspects. In this way I discovered many interesting things… The Mario Chiesa case is thus to be seen as one link in the investigation chain that I had started off with the enquiry into Lombardia Informatica. I had initiated and carried out this enquiry using my own means so that I could understand the anomalous functioning of the relationships between the Public Administration and the entrepreneurs of Lombardy.
GV: What was it about exactly?
ADP: Lombardia Informatica is a company of the Lombardy Region. The Milan Local Government has a share in it. The investigations were carried out from 1987 to 1991 and they uncovered a series of abuses, irregularities and episodes of corruption. I managed to confiscate all the correspondence of the president, Albini and of his deputy Tonali. Albini was a man emerging from the Christian Democrats of Lombardy. Tonali was highly visible and powerful in the Socialist party of Milan. The documents confiscated were letters sent to them by politicians and from these emerged the network of interests behind this company of “convenience”. The investigation about Lombardia Informatica was the true start of Mani Pulite. This revealed to me the mechanism of “do ut des” (Latin phrase: “I give so that you give”). Then the people of power started to look for me, to get close to me. I had no power. I still didn’t know where I was placing my hands. Those who moved around that company knew very well. They definitely knew.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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6 May 2006

1- The beginning

Today I’m going to start publishing some questions and answers from the book "Intervista su Tangentopoli" published by Laterza and edited by Giovanni Valentini.

GV: What are the motives that started off the investigation at that time?
ADP: In fact the magistrates always had the possibility to start investigations. But because of a barely hidden omertà {reluctance of witnesses to give testimony}, because of a certain arrangement with the system of power, because of a lack of operational tools, every time that they started, they only managed to get to the root of a single operation. In fact they didn’t have a culture of exploratory investigation. They were limited to checking up on information that came from outside. When I arrested Mario Chiesa on 17 February 1992, not even people in my office realised what was happening and above all they were not aware that the machinery of the investigations would have been able to continue up to the point at which it eventually arrived. I remember that even the prosecutor Borelli declared publicly: “But why is there so much discussion in political environments? Anyway, Chiesa was taken red-handed. In a few days there’ll be a fast-track trial and the case will be closed.”

GV: And what altered the natural progress of events?
ADP: In the end, basically, the Mani Pulite {Clean Hands} investigation happened because I and only I, let’s say by mistake, “forgot” to present the documents in the time frame needed for “fast track”. That was the fourth or fifth time that I tried to start the engine of the investigations and I knew well that with the “fast track” we would have got the usual sentence of 7 or 8 months with a conditional and a tiny sum to be paid to recompense the victims. And everything would have finished with joy and festivities.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Interview about Tangentopoli
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