Boss of Bosses (26 page)

Di Carlo claimed sensationally that Berlusconi’s fears about a member of his family being kidnapped led to an extraordinary meeting in 1974 between Berlusconi and the rather eccentric and self-important Palermo Mafia boss Stefano Bontate. The meeting, as described by Di Carlo, was held in a Milan office and convened by the Mafia capo Dr Gaetano Cinà, at dell’Utri’s request. Di Carlo, a detached and amusing narrator whose account of events has been hotly contested by dell’Utri, said he was only invited along to make Bontate look good.

‘I shook dell’Utri’s hand, but I didn’t kiss him . . . I’ve never really gone in for all that kissing. Besides he wasn’t Cosa Nostra . . . if he had been, I suppose I’d have been obliged to kiss him.’

Bontate, who believed Berlusconi had a low view of southerners, was very conscious of his status. He expected to be addressed with the formal ‘
lei
’ throughout the meeting, while he used the familiar ‘
tu
’: ‘Bontate had these affectations of grandeur’, said Di Carlo.

According to Di Carlo’s account, which reads like a film script, Berlusconi explained his concerns about kidnapping, and they discussed
protection measures. In a relaxed moment at this improbable-sounding gathering Bontate and Berlusconi sparred.

‘Why don’t you come down and build an industrial plant in Sicily?’ asked the Palermo boss.

‘What do I need to come down there for? I’ve got enough trouble with Sicilians already’, answered the industrialist with a wry smile.

‘Ah, but if you came to Sicily, you’d be the boss!’ protested Bontate mildly. ‘We’d be at your disposal . . .’

‘In the end, Berlusconi said he too was at our disposal for anything: we just had to let Marcello know what we needed. And I don’t know whether the Milanesi mean something different by “at our disposal” than Sicilians do, because for us, when someone says they are at our disposal, in Cosa Nostra that means for anything and everything.’

Dell’Utri’s lawyers, who are appealing against his conviction for Mafia association at the time of going to print, claim to have documentary evidence showing that Bontate could not have been in Milan for this meeting since he was under special surveillance in Palermo and attending a Mafia trial. Whether or not the fabled meeting of Titans took place, Mangano was hired as estate manager at Arcore, where his duties included driving his boss’s daughter to school every day. After dinner, every bit the faithful retainer in immaculate tweeds, Mangano would set off round the gardens accompanied by his Neapolitan mastiffs. But soon enough there was trouble.

On a December night in 1974 Berlusconi gave a grand dinner at Arcore, which Mangano attended. Late at night, as he was leaving, one of the guests was kidnapped. Outside the gates his car was blocked in by two others, he was forced into another car and driven off. But snow was thick on the ground, and the driver lost control, slid off the road and crashed into a bank. The kidnappers made off on foot, and the victim, shocked and a little battered, was rescued. In the ensuing police operation it was discovered that Mangano had a criminal record, and shortly afterwards he left.

Mangano kept in touch with his old friend dell’Utri, however, and in the summer of 1993 the connection probably saved his life. Mangano had just finished an eleven-year sentence for drug trafficking
and had returned to Palermo. His ambition was on fire after being out of the game for so long, and he had become very close to the boss of Porta Nuova, Salvatore Cancemi. But Cancemi had aroused the wrath of Leoluca Bagarella – not a difficult thing to do at the best of times – and he was invited to a meeting to clear up a misunderstanding. Cancemi, remembering the Corleonese family’s peculiarly violent methods of clearing up misunderstandings, knew he was unlikely to survive the meeting and turned himself in to the carabinieri. (His subsequent collaboration would give the authorities their first concrete evidence that Provenzano was not only alive but actually running the organization.)

At this point it would have been Mangano’s turn to die – except that now Bernardo Provenzano had a political project, and Mangano’s powerful contact was needed.

According to a note on a telephone pad produced by the prosecution, Mangano and dell’Utri met twice in 1993. One collaborator claimed these meetings were to discuss a political contract, under which dell’Utri promised legislative change, including ‘softening of the law on confiscation of assets; and release of all those convicted of Mafia association . . . At the same time, dell’Utri told Mangano that it would be good if everyone could stay calm, that is, avoid any acts of violence, which would not contribute to the success of political projects favourable to the Mafia organization.’
²⁷

Dell’Utri said later that he and Mangano may have met a couple of times during the period, but only to discuss Mangano’s personal problems. Dell’Utri’s legal team now say that the telephone notes are totally unreliable as evidence of meetings.

Provenzano’s choice of Forza Italia was a decisive moment in his leadership. He could at last separate himself definitively from Riina’s politics; he also believed he had found a solution to the organization’s immediate crisis: a high-ranking official in a political party who was willing to support changes to the law in their favour.

‘At last Provenzano announced we were in good hands,’ Giuffré recalled, ‘and we could trust them. For the first time, Provenzano committed himself, assuming personal responsibility for the guarantees he had received. And from that moment, we’re on the move,
promoting the Forza Italia line within Cosa Nostra, in order to take it to the rest of Sicily.’

The organization got behind Provenzano’s decision. Even Bagarella agreed to support the new party, providing they kept their promises – on pain of death. Provenzano’s pursuit of a non-violent strategy had a political sponsor. The bombers had lost.

‘Provenzano called a halt to the Mafia’s strategy of attacking the institutions of state’, says assistant prosecutor Nino Di Matteo. ‘This paved the way for him to reach an agreement with political representatives. Under the terms of the deal the Mafia had to disappear from the public arena and must support Forza Italia in the ’94 elections. In exchange, according to our information, within a decade Cosa Nostra would receive certain benefits.’

Although dell’Utri’s links with Cosa Nostra have been proven (he was sentenced to nine years in 2005 but is appealing), there is no evidence that Berlusconi ever courted the Mafia’s support for Forza Italia. Giuffré described Cosa Nostra’s relationship with Forza Italia as a case of jumping on the bandwagon: ‘We have always been smart enough to be on the winner’s side, that’s how clever we are. When we went with the Socialists, you could see it wouldn’t work. It’s not that we control Sicilian politics, but when we back the winners, we’re in. We didn’t create Forza Italia’s success. People were fed up with the Christian Democrats, people were sick of politicians –
unni putieva cchiù
, they couldn’t take any more. So they saw in Forza Italia an anchor to grab hold of, and everyone was talking about it, and it was all new, a new hope. And we, smart as we are, caught the ball on the rebound.’

It has been suggested that with his inflammatory claims about Berlusconi sitting round a table with men of honour, Giuffré was merely making trouble for Cosa Nostra’s political friends, who had failed to deliver any benefits for the organization. Contrary to guarantees Provenzano had allegedly received, there was no let-up in the most draconian anti-Mafia laws. Provenzano had committed early on to improving conditions for prisoners, but when Falcone’s law on maximum security terms for convicted mafiosi was upheld at review, the captive members of Cosa Nostra began to feel sorely neglected.
Although the law did not change fast enough to placate the prison population, Provenzano had more success in other areas. ‘At last the conditions were right to press ahead in Provenzano’s specialist sector, that is, contracts’, Di Matteo explains. ‘Once he’d got the right people in place, he could subvert this system of power that allowed him to be the master.’

To exploit their links with the ruling party, Cosa Nostra needed people who knew how to operate in the political environment. One of these was the eminent doctor and mafioso, the boss of Brancaccio, Giuseppe Guttadauro. In spite of his homely looks – he was short and rotund, with a double chin – his pedigree was excellent: his brother-in-law was Trapani boss Matteo Messina Denaro.

Giuffré recalls: ‘Provenzano’s policy was to reverse Riina’s strategy of violence, and he found in Dr Guttadauro a perfect pupil, who would pursue his pacifist politics in the best possible way. To initiate the process of remodelling the image of Cosa Nostra, Guttadauro made contacts in business and started a debate on how best to apply peacefully the process of silent reconstruction of Cosa Nostra.’

Guttadauro had plans for a huge development in Brancaccio: a shopping centre and multiplex cinema. He planned to sell developers his own land, and then become the guarantor for protection of the site, while making sure that a significant number of Mafia people were employed. It was the perfect business plan for Provenzano’s philosophy.

Provenzano’s political ties enabled him to push through the next phase of his revolution. The election in 1994 was won by Forza Italia with a narrow margin. After that, Cosa Nostra’s strategists started thinking about how to cut out the middleman. One magistrate said, ‘the Mafia has decided it no longer needed intermediaries between itself and the political world. Mafiosi are now being elected directly to political office.’
²⁸

While state subsidies and European funding were pouring into Sicily, the Mafia began to dispense with the system of supporting politicians and began to field them from its own ranks. Local councils in Mafia strongholds such as Bagheria and Villabate were infiltrated by mafiosi: Provenzano’s men were green-lighting developments,
awarding contracts, channelling agricultural and development funding towards Cosa Nostra.

The first Forza Italia association was founded in Villabate by Nino Mandalà, the local Mafia boss. Known as ‘the Lawyer’, Mandalà was respected and feared: he had a violent temper and a vindictive mind. If there was any hold-up in the council for one of the Mafia-backed projects, he would scream abuse at the councillors. He once threatened to punch a councillor, and boasted that he had made a Forza Italia senator cry.

Giuffré claims that councils such as Bagheria became fortresses, closed shops operated from within the local administration. Anyone who lacked the right connections had no hope of getting a contract. ‘I challenge you’, Giuffré said under cross-examination, ‘to find a single company working on a public contract during the mid-’90s that had no links with the Bagheria family.’

But while Provenzano’s people did good business, investigators were tapping their phones, recording their conversations and reading their bank statements. By November 1998 Ilardo and Brusca’s detailed accounts of the principal players in Provenzano’s court finally came to fruition. Early one chilly autumn morning, police raided forty-seven addresses across Bagheria and Villabate, kicking in doors and hauling out mafiosi in handcuffs.

Simone Castello, Provenzano’s postman and factotum, whose links in politics and international business had served his master so well, was led away. He would have to endure the nauseating experience of reading hours of conversations that police had recorded in his car.

Enzo Giammanco, head of the council’s technical office, which had rubber-stamped so many building contracts on behalf of Cosa Nostra, was another one rudely awakened. Just a few months earlier, the feisty Nino Mandalà had been picked up in Villabate. Provenzano’s political network, and his logistical support, had been savaged. Bagheria, for years his impregnable territory, was no longer safe. From now on he would have to look for logistical support where he could get it. The men at his disposal would not necessarily be the ones he would choose.

Nino’s son Nicola Mandalà had followed his father’s footsteps into a career in organized crime and, once the old man was arrested, stepped into his shoes. Nicola was a keen gambler and big spender; he would take last-minute planes to watch important football games on the mainland and visit casinos. Weary agents conducting surveillance never knew where he’d be going or, once he’d started partying, whether he’d keep going all night.

Mandalà was another one who couldn’t help telling his mistress everything. While they snorted cocaine, he recounted the story of his initiation: ‘You prick your finger, the blood comes out and you hold the picture of a saint . . . Then you set fire to the picture, and pass it from one hand to the other, repeating three times, “if I should betray Cosa Nostra, my flesh will burn like this.”’

Mandalà confided to his girlfriend that he was the
de facto
boss of Villabate, with control over the administration: ‘They do whatever I tell them, see?’

‘He was like the prince of the
1001 Nights
: hotels and women and cocaine and champagne.’ Mandalà’s friend Francesco Campanella shared his passion for gambling and occasionally flew with his flash friend to the casino in Val d’Aosta, but he was was shocked by Mandalà’s extravagant lifestyle. He berated his friend for the brazen way he flouted Cosa Nostra’s security rules, ran up massive credit card bills and cashed enormous cheques. Not to mention that he had a child with his mistress.

Mandalà had an excellent contact in Campanella, whose meteoric political career in the Christian Democrats had taken him to the top of Villabate council. He was a good friend and former hustings partner of the ex-regional president, Salvatore Cuffaro, who had been a witness at his wedding.