BARI – Illness in the courtroom for the accused usurer. In the first hearing of the trial on the alleged usury ring which until 2021 would have been managed in Valenzano by the family members of the former boss Michelangelo Stramaglia (killed in 2009 in a mafia ambush) and of the multiple criminal Salvatore Buscemi (also known in the judicial news for having been involved in the investigation into the votes bought in the 2019 local elections with the former Bari city councilor Francesca Ferri and her partner Filippo Dentamaro), the boss’s sister fainted. The hearing, in which the parties were only formed and the task of transcribing the wiretaps was given, was coming to a close when 67-year-old Chiara Stramaglia, Michelangelo’s sister and Buscemi’s aunt, felt ill and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
The woman was arrested (under house arrest) last September with her 30-year-old son, Francesco Giangregorio, on charges of usury and attempted extortion. «Please, do you have to bring the money…or do you want to be beaten? Or do you want me to send people to your house?” it is one of the threats that the 67-year-old allegedly made to a businessman to force him to pay interest on the money lent, which should have been used to repay a previous usurious debt contracted with her nephew Buscemi.
The story dates back to the period between June 2020 and March 2021. The investigation by the Guardia di Finanza, coordinated by the prosecutor of the DDA Fabio Buquicchio, started from the complaints presented by the victim in November 2020 and then in March 2021. In the two complaints the trader he had told of the debts contracted with Buscemi and that then, after the threats received from the boss, he had turned to his family, hoping for mediation and asking for a further loan to cover the debts accumulated with the convicted relative.
In June 2020 the trader had received 5 thousand euros, in July 10 thousand, in September another 10 thousand, for a total of 25 thousand euros. For each tranche, interest of between 250 euros and 1,250 euros per month would have been agreed to be paid in advance. The loan – it is specified in the documents – was initially made by the boss Buscemi, nephew and cousin respectively of the two arrested. To force the trader, who was now “in a state of need”, to pay “the sums illicitly claimed as usurious interest”, the two then threatened him heavily in March 2021. The boss himself allegedly showed up at his office warning him that in case of delays in payments he would “pull his teeth out” and “leave him on the ground for dead”.
The investigators then also ascertained the involvement of the woman’s husband, Filippo Giangregorio, accused of abusive financial activity against three entrepreneurs from Valenzano: without having the right or authorization, he acted as a financial intermediary, also lending money for tens of thousands of euros. He will return to court on May 28 to hear the first prosecution witnesses.
