The Most Evil Secret Societies in History (33 page)

I was in Novara jail, and my relatives had come to see me […] when I went back to my cell and sat down on my bed I started to think that everything I had done in my life had been wrong 'cause I had never done anything which was important to me personally. Every single thing I've done was somebody else's idea. I ain't done nothing in my life. I was a peasant, and in 1978 I got arrested for extortion by mistake, but I was innocent. I went to the old Avellino jail, where I got to know certain camorristi. I thought that the Camorra was just.
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In 1985 the football field of the Poggioreale Prison was turned into a giant court room when 640 Camorra members went on trial. Also in attendance were 300 lawyers and more than 1,000 policemen.

The time and effort Cutolo spent on his young recruits paid enormous dividends, and he saw to it that large numbers of unemployed, disillusioned, directionless youngsters felt they had something to work towards. By the late 1970s, the NCO was the most active criminal organization in the Neapolitan district. Extortion was their main source of income, followed by cocaine. However, Cutolo was not without rivals and one such competitor proved to be the cause of his eventual downfall. The NF (
nuovo famiglia
or new family) was an alliance built up of all the other Camorra groups to fight against the dominance of Cutolo's NCO, whom everyone agreed had grown too powerful. Frequent battles broke out between the two factions, although it wasn't until the early 1980s that Cutolo's organization really began to suffer, eventually dying out altogether. This was not only down to the in-fighting, but also to the authorities who began cracking down hard on the NCO (who were more infamous and more conspicuous than the NF). Other reasons for the organization's demise included the relative youth and inexperience of its members, which in turn meant that internal disputes usually met with one NCO killing another. Cutolo himself was also debilitated when President Sandro Pertini personally ordered that he be removed from his mainland prison and sent to a maximum-security jail on an island near to Sardinia. This was the last nail in Cutolo's coffin, but if it spelt the end of the NCO, it certainly didn't deter other Camorra groups from expanding their businesses and growing in influence. An earthquake that devastated the Naples area on November 23, 1980 handed the Camorra a huge opportunity to make money and further inveigle itself into Neapolitan politics and society.

Causing almost 3,000 deaths and 9,000 injuries, the estimated number of people who were made homeless by the earthquake was between 200,000 and 300,000. Massive building programmes were required and the Camorra, who had for decades been positioning themselves within local government, were now in the ideal situation to win construction contracts, siphoning off large amounts of government money in the process. One group involved in the building scams was the Nuvoletta gang, led by the notorious Camorra boss, Lorenzo Nuvoletta, aided by his three brothers, Angelo, Ciro and Gaetano.

Born and brought up within a farming community to the north of Naples, the young Nuvoletta boys soon joined a Camorra group led by Luigi and Enrico Maisto. In the early 1960s, however, bored with being bit-players, they decided to branch out on their own and established themselves as landowners, supplying foodstuffs to both military and government-run establishments such as hospitals. The Nuvolettas made vast amounts of money during this period, not least because they swindled several insurance companies over a variety of false claims. The money they made from this was then ploughed into the setting up of several money-lending establishments, which soon engaged most local businesses as their clients. Heroin was next on the Nuvoletta brothers' agenda; drug smuggling being the easiest way to make vast amounts of money over a relatively short period of time.

Building up their crime empire, of course, was not without its risks. On more than one occasion the brothers were arrested by police and charged with a variety of offences including extortion. It was also believed that, unlike many Camorra groups, the Nuvoletta gang also enjoyed strong ties with the Sicilian Mafia – often providing safe havens for those Mafiosi who were on the run from the authorities. This testament by Camorra supergrass Pasquale Galasso details how meetings were often held at the Nuvoletta brothers' villas, at which the Mafia were frequently present:

Our worries arose from the possibility that the police would arrive during our meetings and cause a bloodbath, yet Nuvoletta always managed to calm us down. Sometimes when Carmine Alfieri and I looked out at his farmhouse when leaving Vallesana, we saw some police cars parked outside Nuvoletta's house. That proved to us he was well protected […] in the course of these meetings we had to sort out once and for all the tensions Cutolo had created. I can recall that Riina, Provenzano and Bagarella [all Mafiosi] were in Nuvoletta's farmhouse at the same time.
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Being connected to the Mafia had enormous benefits for the Nuvoletta brothers, not least because the Mafia also afforded the Nuvoletta gang protection both politically and from other Camorra organizations.

Reaping the rewards from their many businesses, the Nuvolettas now decided to invest their capital in the ever-burgeoning construction industry, with cement factories their particular choice. After setting up their first operation in April 1979, two years later the company made almost 500 percent profit. Extraordinary as this was, the massive gains were mostly due to the 1980 earthquake. Cement was necessary in all areas of reconstruction. It was almost a licence to print money, particularly after such a major disaster. But not everything was plain sailing, for in the same year that the earthquake struck, workers in the shipyards of Castellammare, who were angered by the Camorra's demands for protection money, mounted demonstrations throughout the summer.

The Nuvolettas didn't allow such a minor matter as social unrest to stand in the way of progress, and throughout the 1980s they made significant inroads into Neapolitan public life, not least when Vincenzo Agizza – a Nuvoletta gang member – was made a Christian Democrat councilor in 1980. This was just the tip of the iceberg. Many other council members and politicians were also connected to the Camorra, if not directly, then indirectly through family members. This meant that the Nuvolettas were soon in control of an international corporation with fingers in such diverse pies as the construction industry, the entertainment business, drugs, fraud, stud farming, real estate and agriculture. Still, as powerful and rich as they undoubtedly were, the Nuvolettas were not immune to attack, as was proved in 1984 when Ciro Nuvoletta was murdered by a rival Camorra group, the Bardellinos. This began a war between the two factions, which saw eight people killed and twenty-four seriously wounded. Perhaps the most notorious Camorra-related event during this turbulent period, one that illustrated the extent to which the Camorra worked handin-hand with some of Italy's most prominent politicians, was the Cirillo affair.

On April 27, 1981, a terrorist organization called the Red Brigade (not to be confused with the German Red Army Faction) kidnapped Ciro Cirillo (a Christian Democrat politician), killing two of his security guards and injuring his secretary. The Christian Democrats had, three years earlier, suffered the loss of another of their members, Aldo Moro, who was also kidnapped and later murdered by the Red Brigade. Knowing what was at stake, therefore, the Christian Democrats (CDs) immediately wanted to negotiate for Cirillo's release. This brought the Camorra squarely into the picture.

One day after Cirillo's capture, the Italian Secret Services were granted permission to visit Raffaele Cutolo in the Ascoli Piceno prison. Present at this meeting was the Christian Democrat Mayor of Giugliano, Giuliano Granata, which indicated just how far the CDs were willing to work alongside the Camorra to negotiate the release of their colleague. In fact, the government was fully complicit in the whole affair, with the Italian Minister of the Interior, Virginio Rognoni, declaring that, ‘The Camorra could have an interest in helping to free Councilor Cirillo. Sometimes the relations between organized crime and terrorism are intertwined, other times they are separate. All possible channels must therefore be opened.'
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In a protest against a Camorra turf war that had seen dozens killed in Naples during 2004, people lay spreadeagled in the street covered in white sheets marked with fake bloodstains to represent those who had lost their lives.

The Camorra's own willingness to become involved in negotiations must, as Tom Behan points out in his book on the group, have something to do with the fact that the police had deployed so many officers in the area to form checkpoints and roadblocks that the Camorra's illegal activities were severely curtailed. The sooner the Cirillo affair ended, the sooner ‘business as normal' could resume. To this end, Cutolo, through the prison network, made contact with his opposite number within the Red Brigade who was also serving out a long prison term, though not in the same jail. But what was Cutolo's asking price for his involvement? How far was the government willing to go in order to secure Cirillo's release? Cutolo himself has said (though naturally this cannot be verified) that the Christian Democrat minister, Vincenzo Scotti, allegedly arranged for Cutolo's faction to be ‘gifted' a substantial number of machine guns as payment.
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Cutolo was, no doubt, also hoping for an early release from prison, as well as perhaps ‘winning' a larger share of construction contracts than his organization was managing to secure at the time. Negotiations continued until it was agreed that both the Red Brigade and Cutolo's New Camorra were to receive large financial pay-offs garnered from a variety of construction companies who all supported the Christian Democrats. Three months after he was kidnapped, Cirillo was released from captivity unharmed. Yet this was only the beginning of the story, for afterwards countless questions were asked (particularly by the newspapers) about the extent of the Democrats' collusion with organized crime to secure Cirillo's release – not to mention how much money had changed hands during their meetings.

More disturbing than this, however, was the fact that several key players in the affair were subsequently murdered, including Antonio Ammaturo (head of the Naples Flying Squad) who was killed on July 15, 1982, Vincenzo Casillo (one of Cutolo's chief negotiators in the affair) who was killed by a car bomb in 1983, and his partner of several years who was found dead a few months later, her body dumped in a motorway ditch.

Eventually, a judicial enquiry was ordered to investigate exactly what had occurred both during and after the kidnapping. In conclusion the enquiry stated the following:

In judgement it seems clear that the evidence points to an attitude on the part of leading Christian Democrats that was markedly different from that of the party's ‘official line'; which was that of reacting with firmness to all Red Brigade blackmails and refusing all hypotheses of a negotiation or a compromise. In reality, there were members of the party who did not follow this official line but were active in various ways to obtain Cirillo's release, turning above all to the mediation of Raffaele Cutolo and accepting negotiations with the Red Brigade.
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With a good number of Italian politicians willing to work alongside the Camorra, this secret organization established a firm hold on Italian politics and society as a whole. Yet, unlike its Sicilian counterpart (the Mafia), which prides itself on secrecy, the Camorra's activities are frequently not entirely covert. For the most part this is probably due to the nature of their business dealings. With contraband cigarettes, for example, the trade requires a relatively large number of people to operate smoothly, many of them in clearly visible roles.

A second way in which the Camorra and Mafia operate differently is the way in which the Camorra either shun, or do not wish to encourage, a clear sense of hierarchy within its different organizations. This makes it very difficult for opposition groups to eradicate any particular Camorra ‘family', for without a recognizable head of operations and subordinate chiefs, there are no targets. Virtually anyone joining the Camorra can rise to the top of his chosen ‘profession', thus making the Camorra an ideal recruiting ground for youngsters wishing to make vast amounts of money in extremely short periods of time. Indeed, the Camorra indirectly employs huge numbers of teenagers, all eager to sell their goods, pedal drugs or extort money, while also encouraging them (those who are under eighteen years of age) to rob and commit murder, because if they are caught they cannot be tried or punished as adults.