The book Pecunia not olet (or money never stinks), which is already a best seller in Italy, try to reconstruct in parallel the evolution of the mafia and that of the Italian defense industry, two worlds that have often come into contact because, despite the plurality of its interests, Cosa Nostra has always been aware that weapons represent a sector among the most palatable economicmind and politically relevant. The story told here has two protagonists, emblematic of two worlds in comparison: crime and law, silence and transparency, business compromise without hesitation and professional ethics without uncertainty.
The first is Vito Roberto Palazzothe, «one of the most perceptual subjectscolosi of the international criminal community ". The second is Francescomaria Tuccillo, a Neapolitan criminal lawyer and former director of the Sub-Saharan Africa region for Finmeccanica (now Leonardo), from the leading 1948 of the defense sector, long considered together with Eni the flagship of the industry in Italy. The two meet, perhaps fortuitously or perhaps not, in a hotel in Luanda in the 2009, during a seminar chaired by a member of the Italian Government. This meeting changes the lives of both and above all reveals that Finmeccanica has nafor decades the shadow of Coknow ours, embodied by the preunobtrusive, behind some of his most lucrative business, of a fugitive convicted of mafia by a final sentence of the Italian Cassation and recognized by Falcone onwards as the treasurer of Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, the «Belves »of Corleone.
The African affair involving Tuccillo and Palazzolo is only one of the many episodes of the large fresco that a Neapolitan magistrate has defined as «the unitary criminal design of the Finmeccanica group ". A fresco in which, in Africa as elsewhere, they appear, in a frenetic succession almost difficult to follow, episiof disturbing and never interamenyou cleared up, where enter in the game I do not knowcrime orgabut also the relations between States and their intelligence services. Suffice it to mention the famous one «mega-Indian bribe ", around which the indoctionsni are knowing new sviluppi: the suspicions that weigh on Finmeccanica I'm not proquite unrelated to the age-old story of our marines, which they influenced. Or a project to sell Italian frigates to Brazil. The tender, whose amount was more than 2,5 billion, saw Finmeccanica, together with another big state company, Fincantieri, fight against the French and closely touched the fate of the Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti, who had taken refuge from time in the Latin America countryno after a long inaction in France. «The element Battisti - says another magistrate who knows the in very wellknown and secreted trighi of the mamost national dife groupsa - fits in morefined in the com contextpetitive. "
The Finmeccanica method and the magistrates of the South
There have been and are many proscures that have tried dipathis perverse skein in the name of legality, beginning with those of Palermo and Naples. In Palermo the search for the sidesmany Palazzolo, started by Giovanni Falcone and lasted almost thirty years, was considered una sort of passage of textsmone between the judge killed in Capaci and those who have it collected the folders with a painful determination that went well beyond the pure sense of duty. In Naples, on the other hand, the arduous task of decrypting this is touchedllo which can be defined as the «metodo Finmeccanica ": even if entrusted over time to other locations for reasons of territorial jurisdiction, almost all the most strategic investigations that have made it possible to understand how the state's defense giant was operating you have started, with great acume investigative, in the rooms of the largest power of attorney in Italy, that of the Neapolitan executive center.
The book makes several times homage to the work of thisI'm worth itmagistrates of the South, who haveno permission to arrest Palazzolo and, above all, to shed light on the cumbersome mysteries that have marked the Italian civil and industrial life by de cenni. Many, many have been and are those - rappresenmany of the institutions, partisan journalists, opinion leaders of all kinds - who complain about the interference of robes in the field of politics and the economy. It is tutabove all doubt that the kingsponsorship of the investigations against which politics lashes often belongs only to politics itself, always committed to self-destruct in the name of an allegedly greater good and never critical of alli take advantage of his lassism or its connivance. Palazzolo is a lam examplepante.
On the other hand, Tuccillo is the emblem of the «good person ", as one of his men defined him leaders, we do not know if with reaadmiration or skeptical disbelief. Has been in fact the only one in Finmeccanica, where many knowpevano, to report the presenof a Sicilian mafia fugitive in places where he should not have been, to do things he should not have done. Why did you speak? For ingenuity, for recklessness or by mania of proantagonism? None of the three hypotheses is apt. Tuccillo is a lawyer, an experienced manager with a quick and subtle strategic thinking, on the edge of coldness. Has reported Palazzolo and his alleged connivance with the group of which he was a part because he was convinced that only bwith work and competence postI am generating a real and lasting prosperity over time. His long-meditated choice cost him a high price in both personal and professional terms.
Unfortunately, even today, those who report guilt are often considered guilty, in a reversal of roles as absurd as generalized: guilty of having broken political or dark business balances, which serve only to consolidate the interests, wealth and power of those who hget you designed. Certainly not a rafto force a business, its capacityto compete, to create occup, to invent products new and to establish themselves on the meras the evolution of Finmeccanica proves without uncertainty. In every system of opaque and closed power the new happens spesI know someone points to the moon and everyone looks at his finger.
The arrest of Vito Roberto Palazzolo, which took place in Bangkok in March of the 2012, was only a step forward on an impervious path, which has not yet ended. In Italy the party politics continues to dominate, the quality of those at the top of the state remains questionable, you preferhe can still delegate command posts to complacent friends rather than the best. The mafias, even if less cruel and more technocratic than once, resist Palermo as in Rome, Reggio Calabria as in Milan. And too many observe them and let them do it, keeping quiet.
He was right that he feared, more than the malevolence of the mallowalready, the silence of the honest.
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Alessandro Da Rold, Pecunia not olet, Milan, Chiarelettere, 2019