It was a trial of superlatives that ended on Monday in Calabria, and it should strike fear into the hearts of the mafia and its supporters in Italian society. Almost four years ago, on December 19, 2019, hundreds of suspects were arrested in Italy and abroad, including Germany, in a spectacular major raid called “Rinascita Scott”. In January 2021, the process began in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme, for which a former call center was converted into a auditorium bunker was rebuilt. At the back of the long hall sat the 338 defendants behind bars, in front of them were the lawyers and prosecutors, and at the front were the judges. A total of 4,700 years in prison were demanded. The last time a similarly ambitious procedure took place was in Sicily in the 1980s.
The cases discussed included murder, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption in government construction contracts and membership in a mafia organization – everything that organized crime has to offer. What was special about this trial was not only the large number of defendants but also its demanding nature. This time it should not only be against the bosses, but also against their supporters in politics and administration. To do this, the prosecutors had compiled thousands of pages of documents and got more than 50 key witnesses to testify against their former cronies.
So the first verdicts in the hour-long announcement by the presiding judge were for a lieutenant colonel of the Carabinieri, who was sentenced to two years and six months (the public prosecutor’s office had demanded eight years), a former regional councilor, who got one year and six months ( 20 years were required) and a former financier: ten years and six months (17 years were requested). But politicians were also acquitted, for whom the public prosecutor had sometimes demanded long prison sentences.
Particular attention is being paid in Italy to the conviction of the conservative politician Giancarlo Pittelli, a former member of parliament from the ruling party Forza Italia, which was once founded by future Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The billionaire construction and media entrepreneur Berlusconi was repeatedly linked to the mafia and died in the summer. His follower Pittelli now received eleven years in prison for supporting a criminal organization (17 years was required).
At the heart of the event were the mafia bosses and their enforcers, specifically members of the Mancuso clan from the town of Vibo Valentia, an arm of the ‘Ndrangheta, which has its base in Calabria and has become global before the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Neapolitan Camorra operating cartel with an estimated annual turnover of more than 50 billion euros. They received the most severe sentences, sometimes 30 years for the bosses of local networks. The case against the alleged clan boss Luigi Mancuso, known as “the uncle”, has been separated and the verdict is still pending.