The largest mobster trial in modern-day Rome is just underway, introduced by the accusation that the country is “morally rotten”.
A total of 46 local politicians, businessmen and officials are on trial following an investigation dubbed “Mafia Capital” which exposed a group of alleged mobsters whose grasp extended into nearly every part of Rome’s City Hall and which siphoned off millions of euros from public services.
Today was the first of 130 hearings scheduled to last until July. The landmark day in Italy’s battle against organised crime was attended by 60 lawyers, flocks of journalists, anti-mafia campaigners and members of the public.
Massimo Carminati, a convicted gangster with a history of involvement with violent far-right groups, and 45 others are accused of operating a mafia-style network that used extortion, fraud and theft to divert millions of euros destined for public services into their own pockets.
Gosue' Bruno Naso, representing alleged ringleader Carminati rejected the idea that Mafia-style intimidation was used to gain contracts. He said that corruption exists everywhere in Italy.
“This country is morally rotten,” he said before the hearing began.
Prosecutors say the racketeering in Rome went on for years, helped to bring the city to the brink of financial collapse and contributed to the current disarray of its infrastructure and many of its public services.
All the accused are implicated in rigging tenders and other corrupt schemes designed to siphon off cash destined for everything from rubbish collection to the reception of newly-arrived refugees.
Much of the prosecution evidence is based on wiretaps obtained after judges accepted the prosecutors were dealing with a genuine mafia structure.
In one recording, Buzzi, alleged to be second in command, is heard boasting that skimming cash intended to feed and accommodate asylum-seekers from Africa and the Middle East is more lucrative than drug dealing. He was heard to say: “Do you have any idea how much I make on these immigrants? Drug trafficking is less profitable.”
Carminati was sentenced to 10 years in 1998 for belonging to the Banda della Magliana, a criminal group which ruled Rome's underworld in the 1970s and 1980s and, prosecutors claim, has reinvented itself in the form of Mafia Capitale.
He is also a former member of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, a far-right group that was involved in the 1980 bombing of Bologna railway station which killed 85 people.
Buzzi was sentenced to 30 years for murder but served six after convincing the authorities that he had reformed his ways.
The scale and nature of the case make it the most significant anti-corruption operation in Italy since the "clean hands" campaign of the early 1990s led to half the country's lawmakers being indicted for taking bribes.
