Apr 10 2008
Author who dug the dirt on Mafia shuns appeals to stand for office
HE HAS worked in textile and construction firms controlled by the Mafia, helped offload smuggled goods from cargo ships, and rubbed shoulders with the Camorra’s teenage footsoldiers in Naples’ drug-infested suburbs.
Now, at only 28, the anti-Mafia writer Roberto Saviano has had both Left and Right knocking at his door and urging him to run for them in Italy’s election.
But the author of Gomorrah – a name-and-shame book about how the Neapolitan Mafia works and makes its money, that has sold 1.2 million copies in Italy and is being translated into 33 languages – politely declined.
“Everybody came to me, from Communist Refoundation to the (post-fascist] National Alliance,” said Mr Saviano, who has been forced to live under police escort since October 2006 and who sleeps in a Naples barracks.
“But my job is to write – that is what I am committed to. I am not a politician.”
The success of Gomorrah, which hit the bestseller list in Italy as soon as it came out in 2006, turned him almost overnight into a national figure – earning him death threats from the criminals he exposed.
So it is perhaps understandable that parties across the political spectrum tried to capitalise on his sudden fame in the run-up to the vote.
Mr Saviano laments, however, that organised crime has not been a big election issue, though both the main candidates – the conservative Silvio Berlusconi and his centre-left rival Walter Veltroni – made anti-Mafia speeches last weekend.
Mr Berlusconi’s centre-right enjoys strong support in Sicily and he reminded voters his last government ended in 2006 with one of the most high-profile Sicilian Mafia arrests, that of Cosa Nostra “boss of bosses” Bernardo Provenzano. “I recall that during our government, more than 30 major fugitives and a top Mafia boss were captured,” Mr Berlusconi told a rally.
In the past, the centre-left has accused the centre-right of being too soft on the Mafia. It has also benefited from anti-Mafia investigations into centre-right politicians. These included the former Sicily governor Salvatore Cuffaro, who was convicted in January of helping people linked to the Mafia. Mr Berlusconi had publicly defended Cuffaro, even though he was from a different, centrist political party.
The author, Mr Saviano, said: “We are talking about what is, in effect, Italy’s biggest economic enterprise, with an annual turnover of 150 billion (£120 billion] – three times as much as Fiat. But this remains a difficult issue to play with in an election – in the north, it does not win votes, and in the south, it scares many people.”
Mr Berlusconi and Mr Veltroni spoke about the Mafia only when they were campaigning in the south, “as if this was only a problem down there”, Mr Saviano said. “Instead, it’s a problem in Milan, in Rome, it’s a problem in the rest of Europe, where Italian Mafia clans are well established” – a reference to the killing of six Italians in Duisburg, Germany, in a mob feud last year.
Renato Venier, an expatriate small businessman living in Germany, is one voter worried about Italy’s image overseas. He owns an ice-cream shop in Duisburg, just up the street from the pizzeria that made world headlines last year after the shootings, which police believe were ordered by a crime boss in southern Italy.
Mr Venier is voting for Mr Berlusconi, despite his doubts that either the conservative politician or his rival can crack down on organised crime.
But he says he has more confidence in the business sensitivities of Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul and one of Italy’s richest men.
“I don’t believe that either political group would be able to tackle the Mafia,” said Mr Venier, who has lived in Germany for 28 years. “It operates above politics and the rule of law. There is too much money and power involved.”
Mr Saviano grew up in Casal di Principe, a town north of Naples, home to a powerful clan in the Camorra, as the Neapolitan Mafia is known – though locals call it “the System”. He saw his first murder victim on his way to school at the age of 13, a year after his father taught him how to shoot a gun.
By tuning into the police radio, he has often arrived at crime scenes on his Vespa before the ambulance.
To research his book, he immersed himself in the world of organised crime, taking jobs with companies that he knew where under Mafia control and hanging out with the young thugs recruited as the Camorra’s foot soldiers in the suburbs of Naples.
The result is a vivid reportage on how pervasive “the System” has become in the city and the surrounding Campania, reaping huge profits from extortion, drugs, sweat shops making clothes, public works contracts, managing hospitals and waste disposal.
Mr Saviano said that, with the election approaching, Mafia clans have been positioning their pawns at the local level to make sure they’ll keep doing business as usual, whoever wins.
The writer says he is certain the “Mafia will make me pay” for the book. “With my words, I have tried to change something, but the price has been too high,” he said. “I just wish I could go back to a normal life”.
Author who dug the dirt on Mafia shuns appeals to stand for office - By Silvia Aloisi in Rome - Published Date: 10 April 2008 - Source: The Scotsman - http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Author-who-dug-the-dirt.3966306.jp
