by Alessia Candito
Source: Repubblica
“Those are terrified of Reggio Calabria”. In the jargon of the group leader of the Brothers of Italy in the Calabria Region Giuseppe Neri, for whom the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office has unsuccessfully requested his arrest for mafia political electoral exchange, “those” are the new party colleagues of FdI, who welcomed him to open arms despite the years of militancy in the center-left. The terror, on the other hand, is due to the many, too many times in which the name of this or that exponent of Giorgia Meloni’s party has ended up in the papers of a judicial investigation, among the suspects in a proceeding or the defendants on trial.
Pittelli’s “added value” according to Giorgia Meloni
Among the latest in chronological order, the former senator Giancarlo Pittelli, a high-ranking freemason, sentenced to 11 years as advisor to the Limbadi boss Luigi Mancuso for having made “his significant assets available to his entire ‘Ndrangheta family”. of knowledge and privileged relationships with leading exponents at a political-institutional level, in the business world and in the professions”. When Forza Italia had passed among the Melonians, the Prime Minister herself had publicly boasted of it with a tweet: “The FdI community is growing, strengthening and welcoming Giancarlo Pittelli: an added value for Calabria and for the whole Italy”…
Valentino’s forced step back to CSM
However, the stumbles are not just a recent circumstance, but a historical trend. Without going too far to the roots, when the party was called MSI and its champion from Reggio Ciccio Franco, with the help of the elite of the ‘ndrangheta from Reggio and characters of the caliber of Stefano Delle Chiaie and Pierluigi Concutelli, capitalized on the Moti, already at An times there was some problem. And it is certainly not judicial archeology if it is true that what Giorgia Meloni would have wanted as vice president of the CSM, the former senator Giuseppe Valentino, had to take a step back two years ago. At the time he was under investigation in a proceeding connected to the Gotha anti-mafia maxi-trial, a circumstance of which he was perfectly aware: called in 2021 to the courtroom to report on his relationships with Paolo Romeo – first-hour missino, high-ranking freemason, for the repentant man of Gladio and Piduist sentenced to 25 years as a prominent exponent of the strategic direction of the ‘Ndrangheta – he had had the opportunity to remain silent.
The mayor of the ‘Ndrangheta
His conversations with Romeo – together with Giorgio De Stefano, for the judges the two-faced Giano of the political-mafia power – remained on the record and weighed heavily during the years in which they were busy defining the institutional structure of the city of Reggio Calabria. Not a minor detail, at the time Romeo had already been condemned as the eminence grise of the De Stefano clan, historically one of the five who have held power in Reggio Calabria and beyond for decades.
The “champion” to focus on is Peppe Scopelliti, later mayor of Reggio and governor of Calabria, definitively sentenced to 4 years and 7 months for having falsified the municipality’s budget, causing a redundancy worth hundreds of millions of euros to disappear. Leader of the Youth Front like Meloni and in those years together with her among the child prodigies of the right, frequenting transversally from the curve to the living rooms, from picciotti and followers of the ‘ndrangheta to the scions of the so-called Reggio bene, he is considered a “braciolettone” but in capable of being a “herd dog”. Copyright by Paolo Romeo, who sets out the terms of the question: “Let him not be the mayor and then it lasts, otherwise we will vote next year”.
The AN councilor: “I was a policeman, a freemason and an ‘Ndrangheta supporter”
Instead he tries, he favors only one clan – the investigations say – and the others get into turmoil. To find a solution it took a double meeting in Rome. Reason? “Peppe had to get in line with the various families, he had to stop favoring the De Stefanos so much”, says the ‘ndrangheta turncoat Seby Vecchio, former municipal councilor of AN, who remained at large long enough to pass through the FdI, who when he begins to collaborate in front of the prosecutors and begins like this: “I have been a policeman, a politician, a regular freemason and an ‘Ndrangheta supporter”.
‘Ndrangheta and politics
It is the early 2000s and there are two meetings in Rome. The first to “talk about ‘Ndrangheta and politics” in the AN offices in the presence of “Sarra, the then senator Giuseppe Valentino and Umberto Pirilli” who would soon become an MEP. The second, in the presence of the representatives of the leaders of the most important clans of Reggio Calabria, with Sarra acting as guarantor for the decisions taken.
“Believe, obey, dance”
Vecchio is reliable, the judges have confirmed several times, including in the trial in which Alberto Sarra, Scopelliti’s right-hand man and former regional undersecretary also with AN in his pedigree, was sentenced to 13 years as a reserved member of the ‘Ndrangheta. Scopelliti and Pirilli – for the magistrates an instrument of the clans’ plan to take over the institutions, from the Municipality to the EU Parliament – at the time of the sentence were under investigation in related proceedings. What will then cause Scopelliti’s prices to rise will be a fake attack – “a joke”, as the deputy prosecutor Giuseppe Lombardo defined it during the indictment – which, thanks to three SISMI information sheets, signed by Marco Mancini, in that period curiously often in the city, he becomes a threat from the ‘Ndrangheta. After that untriggered bomb placed in bathrooms where no one passes, Scopelliti becomes a star of the anti-mafia and in Reggio Calabria the era of “believe, obey, dance” begins, an endless cicada summer, which makes the clans do big business and leaves the city in ruins.
Everything collapses when the accounting bubble in Reggio Calabria explodes and the investigations begin to reveal the links between the right that governed and the clans. The Municipality is dissolved due to the mafia. Scopelliti is already governor, but the long wave reaches him: there is “continuity in the contiguity”, says the report.
The arrest of the regional coordinator of FdI
Having archived that season with Scopelliti in prison for falsified municipal accounts and progressively dumped by AN, things certainly aren’t improving for Giorgia Meloni’s party.
The investigations into the Valle Lampada clan in Milan in the meantime also overwhelmed the regional councilor Franco Morelli, who was then definitively sentenced to 8 years and 3 months because, like the former judge Giglio – also convicted – “men reduced to the condition of blackmail and subordination ”. And even the new course in Reggio stumbles upon yet another manager who rolls in the dust due to relations with the ‘Ndrangheta clans. His name is Sandro Nicolò, he was overwhelmed by the “Black Book” anti-mafia investigation and arrested while he was regional councilor and coordinator of FdI. For the magistrates he was in every way an expression of the Libri clan, the same one that killed his father. The gangs had focused on him in the 2014 regional elections, so much so that they openly rejoiced at the news of the results: “With Sandro we won”. But the former coordinator of FdI – other investigations later revealed – was also fishing among other families: “Comrade, you’re not doing anything for this electoral campaign, you’re not making an effort, I’m telling you, look at everyone in the family for a moment, but » says Nicolò, intercepted, to a man from the Serraino clan.
“We have to push a little more, more, more,” he tells him. The criminal relevance of the discussions and agreements will be defined by the trial, while the unequivocal fact of the intimate relationships with members of the Reggino clans remains.
The 2020 regional elections and the “‘ndrangheta derby” between the FdI candidates
In FdI it’s an earthquake, from Rome they send Edmondo Cirielli, current deputy foreign minister, to the shores of the Strait as commissioner. It is under his mandate that the candidacies of Domenico Creazzo and Giuseppe Neri were born. The first was arrested twenty days after the election to the regional council. The accusation of having used his brother Antonio as an intermediary to ask for and obtain support and votes from the Alvaro clan in the 2020 regional elections. He was acquitted at first instance, the prosecutor’s office appealed. Just as he lodged an appeal against the investigating judge’s decision not to arrest Giuseppe Neri, his great competitor in FdI in that electoral round and – emerges from the investigation – also in the search for consensus among the ‘Ndrangheta families. Two naturally connected investigations that tell of maneuvers and discussions with the clans of Reggio and the province to gain support from the mafia. And with full awareness – this is the magistrates’ accusation against Neri, also shared by the investigating judge – that they were clan votes. He personally contacted the Aranites above all, but also other gangs.
And the clan mediator orders the FdI group leader: “You have to answer to me”
“I’m telling you these with my eyes closed, a thousand votes between Reggio and the province, but precisely because I know them,” says the current group leader of FdI in the Calabria Region to Luigione Dattola, who is known not to be under investigation. He too is a candidate but for the municipal elections, also from FdI, also hoping for support from the clans for the upcoming competition. And he relies on Neri, who for him knocks on the door of the Araniti mediator and son-in-law of the boss Mimmo “il Duca” Araniti, Daniel Barillà, who recently ended up under house arrest also for his electoral maneuvers. At the time, relations with him cooled. After the 2020 regional elections, Neri’s discussions with the Araniti clan came to light, the new regional councilor got scared and disappeared. But Barillà is an ally that he does not want – or cannot – give up. This is why he returns to the fold and takes orders without batting an eyelid: “I supported you?! Yes! And you have to answer to me. If I don’t give a damn about your friends is another thing. This is the reasoning you have to do.”
The solidarity statement stopped by Rome
Circumstances about which Giorgia Meloni’s party did not utter a breath, Neri remained group leader and no one asked for his resignation. Indeed, in the days following the arrest, while Neri’s chats with representatives of multiple clans began to circulate in the newspapers, peppered with threats and insults to journalists. The stop came from Rome. The imposed line is that of silence. Or of the “lower juncu that passes the slope”, lower yourself as the rush passes when the flood passes. A strategy that historically the ‘Ndrangheta also adopts when arrests shake its foundations.
