Bertolaso: Et tu, Guido?

As we write it is hard to know exactly how the latest scandal - that which some of the country's least imaginative journalists have dubbed Bertolaso-Gate - will actually play out. We don't know if Civil Protection chief Guido Bertolaso, despite the ongoing support of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, will be forced to resign. We don't know of what, if anything, the country's most-admired high-profile official is actually guilty. What we do know is that the preliminary results of an investigation into collusion, corruption and bribery by high-ranking civil servants and a group of unscrupulous "costruttori" or builders, that was carried on over the last 18 months by the ROS Carabinieri on orders from the district attorney's office (la Procura) of Florence has left a sour taste in many people's mouths that will be difficult and perhaps impossible to eliminate.

The Italian cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, met last week in the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria and approved a ten-point plan to speed up the fight against the Mafia. At the same time, the Italian manufacturers' association, Confindustria, announced that from here on any member who pays protection money to any of Italy's criminal associations will be asked to resign from the organization. The so called "pizzo" is estimated to affect at least 160,000 Italian companies and businesses.

The government's new plan calls for the establishment of a national Agency that would manage the wealth confiscated from captured and convicted criminals and which will be based in Reggio Calabria, the capital of the crime-riddled Calabria region. A codex of anti-Mafia legislation from as far back as 1965, together with a detailed map of the country's criminal organizations, will also be compiled to help police combat them, along with an interforce desk that will share information among Italy's diverse police forces. In addition, the country's anti-Mafia task forces will now be given authority over illegal waste management. Given the recent riots in nearby Rosarno, attempts to limit illegal immigration, thought to swell the ranks of criminals employed by the Mafia, will be stepped up as will a long-overdue crackdown in the area on enterprises that use illegal labor.

Over the last year or two, Italian police appear to have made significant strides against organized crime, capturing many of the "most wanted" leaders of Cosa Nostra (Sicily), the Camorra (Campania) and the N'dranghete (Calabria). But the hold of the Mafia (or, rather, Mafias) on the Italian economy remains enormous. According to a report, released last week, by Confesercenti, the Italian association of small businesses (primarily tourism, commerce and refreshments), the estimated financial turnover last year for Italian organized crime - a business the association's authors dub Mafia Inc - in Italy was 135 billion euros, equal to 7% of Italian GNP.

Furthermore, the present Italian government has made some decisions that appear likely to weaken progress against organized crime, namely that of sharply limiting police and magistrates in their use of telephone tapping, by attempting to shorten the length of trials, and by giving arrested criminals the possibility of choosing a form of trial - the so-called rito abbreviato -which allows mafiosi to end up with jail terms that experts say are too short, that is, not long enough to make working with for for organized crime a real risk.

The plan for a new Agency to deal with confiscated wealth - estimated at over five billion euros worth - could make a difference but not, critics say, if the instrument used is that of auctioning off homes, cars, factories, inventories and so on, as in a public auction is it not hard for a mafioso to use an intermediary to buy assets back.

According to the Confesercenti report, organized crime's major earnings come from narcotics, estimated at E 60 billion, the protection racket (E24) and waste disposal and related activities, accounting for some E16 billion. Subcontracts in building and revenue from "normal" investments make up the rest. The report also says that while Italian GNP as a whole dropped last year by 5%, organized crime increased its turnover by some 3.7% (how they are able to calculate this is beyond me, but this is what the report says, speaking of a sharp increase in usury because of reduced lending by banks.). It says that organized crime is much more flexible in its largely cash-based operations than legitimate businesses.

Guess who came to visit?

Sunday was a day of pomp and circumstance on Rome's Lungotevere river road with rabbis in toqued hats and white and black robes waiting outside Rome's imposing Tempio Maggiore and then, for the second time in modern history, smilingly accompanying inside, as their guest, a Roman Catholic Pope. At the closing part of a two-hour ceremony, where he shared a fruit-bedecked podium with Italian Jewish dignitaries, Pope Benedict XVI denounced the horrors of the Shoah, said the bonds linking Judaism and Christianity - he specifically mentioned the Ten Commandments - were indelible and urged that the festering sores of anti-Semitism be forever healed.

In a 15-minute speech, the last of the two-hour ceremony that was broadcast live by two major networks (I watched the entire thing and it was fascinating), Benedict said the Shoah could never be forgotten and made a it clear that he would continue the Holy See's dedication to improved relations with Judaism. He spoke of the landmark Second Vatican Council as "a clear landmark to which constant reference is made in our attitude and our relations with the Jewish people, marking a new and significant stage."

Vergogna!

Most of the workers lived in tents or makeshift cardboard "dwellings" inside or on the grounds of old, abandoned factories with no sanitary facilities and in one case only one working water faucet for over 600 people. A report that included an interview with a doctor from Doctors without Frontiers said the air was more or less unbreathable and most of the people living in that factory were suffering from respiratory or intestinal problems. Vergogna!

Mr. B. is all better.

An apparently good-as-new Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi returned to Rome today, some three weeks after being attacked after a rally by a Milanese man with a history of psychiatric disorders. I, too, am back in Rome after two weeks in New York and Washington where I did not allow the icy cold and wind to disrupt a highly enjoyable vacation in which I was able to see most of my best friends, bought myriad things you can't get here or which cost less in the US, and ate my way through various Asian cuisines and good old US standbys such as pancakes, corned beef hash, scrambled eggs and bacon, corn muffins, donuts and the great New York bacon cheeseburger, with French fries and/or onion rings. Slurp. (Yes, I came back to Italy several pounds heavier but having returned to my near daily gym routine, I expect to soon return to normal.)

Meanwhile, both Berlusconi and I were greeted with an outbreak of what may have been the worst race riots so far to have occurred in Italy and which have once again shed light on this country's failure, despite a lot of high fallutin' words, to make sure the country's immigrants are treated fairly and guaranteed humane living conditions.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was punched in the mouth today at the close of a political rally in Milan by a 42 year old man with a history of mental problems. The police said the man, who was immediately arrested, may have hit Berlusconi with some sort of metal object. Berlusconi, who was bleeding copiously, was taken to hospital to be kept under observation for 24 hours. Two of the premier's teeth were reportedly damaged and a bone in his nose was said to be fractured.

Rudy, Amanda, Raffaele

Many Italians were taken aback last week by the reports of outrage in some parts of the U.S. regarding the 26-year sentence imposed Friday, December 4th on 22-year old Amanda Knox after she (together with a former boyfriend) was convicted by a Perugia court of murdering Knox's British roommate, Meredith Kercher, two years earlier in what was said to have been a sex game gone wrong. A third person, Rudy Guede,born in the Ivory Coast but later adopted by an Italian family, had been convicted several weeks earlier for the same crime and sentenced to 30 years in jail.

And Italian newspapers have only made things worse by giving exaggerated play to some relatively mild comments over the weekend by American Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Although Ms. Clinton merely said after admitting she knew little about the case (and why should she, given that she has been spending most of her time on more urgent issues such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East?), but would be willing to listen to anyone who had serous doubts about the way the young American woman had been treated, even the usually serious Corriere della Sera ran a banner headline today saying "Amanda, Clinton to intervene", an obvious overstatement that led to talk about a diplomatic incident until Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini intervened to say there had been no U.Si complaints at all. And then Amanda, herself, interviewed from jail, said she had no complaints about the conduct of Italian justice but since she maintains her innocence was, of course, filing an appeal. And who knows what will happen then?

Anyone who reads this blog will have noticed that I have barely written about it, primarily because I have never been particularly interested in following it closely simply because one of the major defendant was an American. Murder is murder no matter who commits it. And if it is true that Italian crime scene police work often appears to be quite sloppy, and that the wheels of the Italian justice system mover very SLOWLY and definitely need to be oiled, I cannot not think of any reason why Amanda Knox should have been particularly victimized by Italian authorities. She got a lot of bad press after her arrest, in part because of the pictures released of her which made her seem kind of wild, silly and possibly over-sexed and even more so because she tried to blame the murder on an African "barista" who two weeks later was totally exonerated.

But if Amanda was convicted on evidence that was largely circumstantial, what else is new? O.J. got off although most of us think he shouldn't have. Others can be unjustly convicted. It's had to tell. Just the other day, an Italian prosecutor in Pavia in the Italian north said he would ask for 30 years of jail time for Alberto Stasi, a 26 year old student (now graduated form University) accused of murdering his fiancée Chiara Poggi in the latter's home town of Garlasco in the summer of 2007. There, too, the evidence is largely circumstantial and it is impossible to know have a real opinion as to his guilt or innocence.

Amanda

Recently speaking out in Amanda's favour, and his own, was Raffaele Sollecito, the former boyfriend who many people believe was besotted with the young American student, so much so that he let her drag him into a deadly situation. He says he had nothing to do with Meredith Kercher's death (he throat was cut) and was not in the house when it happened. But he also can't believe that Amanda was involved. "E' dolcissima". ("She's incredibly sweet"), he said.

Veronica

Veronica Berlusconi, the estranged wife of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is reportedly asking for €3.5 million a month, the equivalent of $5.3 million, as part of a divorce settlement. The Rome daily, il Corriere della Sera, reported last week that according to undisclosed sources, the counter offer of Mr. Berlusconi, Italy's richeswt man, was for €300,000 a month. The paper quoted sources close to the prime minister as having said that he had already given his soon to be ex-wife a lump sum of more than €60 million and had offered to let her keep Villa Belvedere, the mansion outside Milan she has been living in (without her husband) for the last several years .

On November 12, Mrs. Berlusconi's lawyers filed a legal separation request in a Milan court, apparently signalling that an amicable agreement was not in the offing. Veronica Berlusconi. A former actress who met Berlusconi 30 years ago and who married him in 1990 (by which time he had left his former wide and had three children with Veronica), made public her decision to arrive at a total break with her husband last spring, after it became known he had attended the birthday party of an 18 year old Neapolitan girl.

Personally, I do not believe that Berlusconi ever had sexual relations with the girl, the daughter of friends, and Mrs. Berlusconi said she was also angry because he repeatedly missed the birthdays of their children. But he had already been thought to have had affairs with several younger women (but not as young as that one) and subsequently it became known that among the women he invited to parties in his official residence were several prostitutes (although they appear to have been paid by a Bari businessman eager to ingratiate himself with the premier.

But this may turn out to be the least of Mr. B's problems. Rumors have been circulating that along with court cases regarding matters involving his vast media and real estate empire, some magistrates here are looking into his alleged relations with some elements in the mafia. It's hard to tell what is true and what isn't since there are several center-left newspapers here that have made it clear they hope to provoke his downfall, but let's just say this is not a good time for the feisty, filthy rich controversial leader.