Former Forza Italia senator and convicted mafia criminal Marcello Dell'Utri should have disclosed all income and expenses from his bank accounts. Including donations from Silvio Berlusconi. For ten years he didn't do it. By omitting changes in assets for an amount of 42 million euros. It is for this reason that the Florence public prosecutor's office requested and obtained the preventive seizure of 10 million 840 thousand euros. Also targets the accounts of Miranda Ratti, wife of the ex-Publitalia who divorced from her husband in 2020. But for prosecutors Luca Tescaroli and Luca Turco, this separation was fictitious and served precisely to avoid kidnappings. Part of the amount (nearly 4 million euros) was blocked in the accounts of Marina and Pier Silvio Berlusconi, third parties not targeted by the investigation. Because Dell'Utri claims credit for his father's will.
The investigation, the phone tapping, Silvio's blackmail
It was Florence Preliminary Investigations Judge Antonella Zatini who gave the green light to the provision. This comes in the context of the endless investigation into the mafia massacres of 1993 and the hypothesis of a crime of which Berlusconi and Dell'Utri are being investigated as instigators. According to prosecutors, this money was paid over the years to pay for the former senator's silence. “The analysis of financial flows from Berlusconi to Dell'Utri and his family leads us to believe that the disbursements constitute compensation to Dell'Utri for the convictions he received and his silence in the criminal trials in which he was and is involved. , thus corroborating the hypothesis of his involvement in the massacre.” In addition, investigators recorded conversations “in which reference was made to the need to blackmail Berlusconi,” they write.
Women on the phone
According to the investigation documents, today the Corriere della Sera, there is an interception from 2020 in which Verdini's wife, Simonetta Fossombroni, and Dell'Utri's wife speak. “If someone doesn’t blackmail him, my daughter…” said the first. “That’s precisely it,” replies the other. According to prosecutors, these words “help define the illicit cause that pushed Berlusconi to give enormous sums of money to Dell'Utri.” Still according to the prosecution, Dell'Utri's money would have been used to respect a pact with Giuseppe Graviano, the head of the Brancaccio neighborhood who, along with Matteo Messina Denaro, over the years, a favorite of Totò Riina, remained secret . . And after the arrest of 'U Curtu in Palermo, he developed the strategy of massacres on behalf of Cosa Nostra.
Support for Forza Italy
Judicial collaborator Gaspare Spatuzza was the first to speak about the alleged pact. Who spoke of a meeting at Doney's Bar with Mother Nature during which they had to talk about the planned attack on the carabinieri at the Olympic Stadium. Graviano tells Spatuzza that after this hard blow, the strategy can be considered closed because the two brothers found help from “one of our fellow citizens” and his boss. Or Dell'Utri and Berlusconi. The agreement provides for electoral support for the new Forza Italia in exchange for “Dell'Utri's promise, through Berlusconi, to direct the government's legislative policy towards measures favorable to Cosa Nostra in terms of prison treatment, collaborators of justice and seizure of assets”. But a few days after this meeting, Filippo and Giuseppe were arrested in a restaurant in Milan.
Fictitious divorce
Prosecutors also believe the divorce between Ratti and Dell'Utri is a fictitious divorce. Made precisely to allow the former senator to receive money through his wife. So much so that the two continued to share the same roof. Lunch and dinner together, except when the wife goes to live in the Dominican Republic to obtain citizenship. Republic reports that in the interceptions, Ratti “believes that she is the holder and owner of real economic rights towards Berlusconi”. He explains to his interlocutors “that the debt to them is still open”. And he specifies: “It’s a question of principle, the objective must be pursued to the end, I will not give up.” At the base, there is “our story”. And for Dia, there is “the awareness that all their demands, supported by Berlusconi, are based on a kind of compensation for what they have suffered over time because of his fault, for having probably concealed it”.
Interest-free loans
Documents were found at Dell'Utri's home, including a file titled “interest-free loans”, in which there was a sheet of paper dated “Milan September 14, 2018” which, according to investigators, “apparently came from Berlusconi” . It reads: “Dear Miranda, in reference to the interest-free loans I have granted you on the following dates.” The numbers and dates follow. And Berlusconi's intention to forgive the entire debt “because of the friendship that has linked Berlusconi to Dell'Utri for 35 years.” Lawyers Francesco Centonze and Filippo Dinacci, for their part, indicated that “the seizure concerns sums of money received by Dr Dell'Utri and Ms Ratti by means of bank transfers carried out, in a completely lawful and transparent manner, by Dr Berlusconi for reasons of affection and gratitude towards the friend Dell'Utri”.
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