Narrator: |
This
is the Sicilian hill town of Corleone. In the secret world of the Mafia, the
role of this town was for years the greatest secret of all. |
|
Through
a ruthless campaign of killing and intimidation, the Corleone branch of the
Cosa Nostra by the early 1980s came to dominate the Mafia in all of Sicily.
The old men of Corleone have seen their village grow large and prosperous.
The young have grown used to film crews attracted by the town's notorious
reputation. The source of their prosperity, the Mafia's success over three
decades in dominating the international drug traffic. |
Speaker
2: |
One
statistic for example that I think is very eloquent is the fact that in 1974
there were only eight deaths by drug overdose in all of Italy, which is a
quite extraordinary fact. Now more than a thousand people die every year of
heroin overdose in Italy, and there are hundreds of thousands of addicts. |
Narrator: |
Corleone
was the operational base of this man, Salvatore Totò
Riina, whose bloody corporate takeover of the Sicilian Mafia made him the
Capo dei Tutti Capi, the boss of bosses of the most powerful organised
crime network in Italy. |
Speaker
3: |
What
is now happening in Italy is something like a war, I mean an institutional
war because the friends of Totò Riina, the friends
of the Mafia are not in front of the state. They are against the state but
they are inside the state. |
Narrator: |
In
this building according to a Mafia pentito or supergrass
Totò Riina met the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio
Andreotti, and the two men changed a kiss of mutual respect. That allegation
is at the centre of the case against Andreotti. But whatever the verdict, the
head of Italy's Antimafia Commission says there can
be no doubt that the Mafia succeeded in penetrating the inmost recesses of
the Italian state. |
Speaker
4: |
[Italian
00:02:38]. |
Narrator: |
The
system starts at ground level. This is Agrigento on Sicily's southwest coast,
a survival of the most elegant of ancient civilizations, the Greek Empire.
But the classical purity of Greek times finds no echo in the unplanned chaos
of modern Sicily. Today's Agrigento is a wilderness of concrete boxes crowded
in upon each other. Here it's easy to understand how Italy comes to use more
concrete per head of population than any other country in the world. And
Agrigento's Valley of the Temples, once the unspoiled backdrop to this
unparalleled collection of monuments, is dotted with buildings thrown up in
flagrant breach of all the official planning regulations. |
|
Corruption
in Sicily isn't just an activity that happens on the fringes, not just a
matter for the drug squad or the vice squad. It affects the whole of the way
that society works from local roads and building right up to the neglect of
international heritage sites like this. And the reason it does is that in
Sicily organised crime and government have come together like this and now
they're almost inseparable. |
|
Threatened
with death for his work, Luigi Li Gotti is lawyer
for five of the informers who revealed the innermost secrets of the Mafia to
investigators. |
Luigi
Li Gotti: |
[Italian
00:04:35]. |
Narrator: |
The
Sicilian capital, Palermo, is dominated by the Mafia with disastrous results
for the people and the structure of the city. Once a royal capital, home to
Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton during the Napoleonic Wars, Palermo's
historical riches are being allowed to rot. In any other European city these
buildings would be tendered and restored. Here Mafia real estate speculators
leave historic structures to crumble and the inhabitants to live in squalor. |
Speaker
3: |
The
Mafia is not an organisation of marginality. The Mafia is not an organisation
of poorless. The Mafia is an organisation of power
that produces marginality. The Mafia is an organisation of richness producing
and the development. |
Narrator: |
And
it's not just a tourist resort that's going to waste. For ordinary people's
daily life here takes place against a background of violence and
intimidation. When magistrates got into the records of a single Mafia family
controlling one small corner of Palermo, they found $400 million worth of
assets. Their sources of income ranged from big-time drug dealing right down
to extortion payments of a couple of hundred dollars a month from dozens of
small shopkeepers. |
Speaker
2: |
Control
of the territory, of being in command of not just large economic resources
but the everyday lives of ordinary people is very important to the Mafia and
Mafia type groups in Sicily. These are things that established very clearly
with the population who is in control of the area and it also provides you
with impunity, people are obviously, someone who is being extorted by the
Mafia is not likely to act as a witness against them if they see something
going wrong. |
Narrator: |
The
hardest thing for a Sicilian to do is stand up against the oppressors. This
is Capo d'Orlando halfway along Sicily's north
coast. It was just a beach resort town until it became the centre of a modest
revolt against the killers and extortionists. The business people of Capo d'Orlando formed an association against the Mafia. |
|
We
came here to Capo d'Orlando to talk to members of
the association about their struggle against the Mafia. It's a half day's
drive from Palermo and we wouldn't have come if the group hadn't assured us
that members would be willing to talk. But now that we're here it's become
clear that no local businessman is willing to appear. An indication it seems
of the Mafia's continuing ability to intimidate. |
|
It
was only in the relative safety of Rome that we were able to track down the
business association's founder. As a reward for his outspokenness, Tano Grasso, now the MP for Capo d'Orlando
lives in constant fear of assassination. |
Tano Grasso: |
[Italian
00:08:15]. |
Narrator: |
Over
half a century Italians have got used to going to the movies to find out the
facts about how their state fell into the clutches of organised crime. |
Video: |
Mr.
Luciano just told the United States government to drop dead. |
Narrator: |
Francesco
Rossi's film Lucky Luciano was the first to detail the way the liberating
American Army let the Mafia get its hands on the reins of power. |
Speaker
8: |
[Italian
00:09:12]. |
Video: |
Enough
with this crap. I don't care who it is, Francis, Carlos, everyone, you're
telling me. |
Narrator: |
And
by using them to help with the invasion of the mainland, the Americans gave
the Cosa Nostra a springboard to power not just in Sicily but in post-war
Italy itself. |
Speaker
3: |
From
that moment the Mafia bosses, I mean the Sicilian American Mafia bosses got
an international political role and they used this role even after in the
political life of Italy. |
Narrator: |
But
Italians have again had to resort to the cinema to tell them the facts about
the penetration of their political system by the criminal state within a
state. It was the pool of Palermo magistrates led by Giovanni Falcone whose
work prized open the Cosa Nostra's long-held
secrets. |
Speaker
9: |
[Italian
00:10:45]. |
Narrator: |
Giuseppe
Ayala is the only judge in the Falcone pool to have survived the Mafia's
bloody campaign of revenge assassinations. He's in no doubt about the worth
of his old friend's work. |
Giuseppe
Ayala: |
[Italian
00:11:31]. |
Narrator: |
Falcone
and his colleagues couldn't have broken the Mafia open without eyewitnesses.
And in the nature of the organisation that meant they had to persuade top mafiosi to talk. The key was Tommaso Buscetta,
himself a former Mafia boss displaced by Totò Riino's brutal gang warfare. It was evident from Buscetta and other pentiti, supergrass
informers that led to the massive success of the so called Maxi Trial in
which 344 mafiosi, bosses, and lower ranking gang
members were found guilty. But the deeper significance of the supergrass evidence was political. This man, Salvo Lima,
was branch head of the dominant Christian Democrat Party. |
Speaker
2: |
He
was the biggest vote getter in all of Sicily and is believed to have
controlled about 25% of the Christian Democrat vote in Sicily. |
Narrator: |
But
Lima was also an associate of the Mafia and at the same time the political
right-hand man to Giulio Andreotti, then serving his seventh term as Prime
Minister of Italy. |
|
Faced
today with the 60,000 pages of court documents that have piled up in the
trial against him, Giulio Andreotti still denies that Lima was linked to the
Mafia. |
Giulio
Andreotti: |
[Italian
00:13:38]. |
Speaker
2: |
I
don't think there's any doubt that Salvatore Lima was one of the politicians
in Italy who was most heavily tied to the Mafia, and that's been confirmed in
many different court cases. |
Narrator: |
What
no one questions is that over 45 years in power, Andreotti was the ultimate
political fixer. He began in 1947 and his constituency was the Italian
capital itself. |
|
They
call Rome the Eternal City and Andreotti lasted so long in government that he
gained the nickname of the Eternal Giulio. Of all cities this is the one
that's experienced the most. In a city which has seen so much, there's a
pervading belief that one way or another there's nothing that can't be fixed. |
|
In
this respect at least Giulio Andreotti is a true son of Rome, a man who could
say with only a hint of a smile that power is a problem only for those who
don't have it. His political philosophy was said to be see all, tolerate
much, and correct one thing at a time. But one of the issues raised by the
trial has to be, did he simply tolerate too much and did he fail to correct
in time the most urgent and corrosive problem of all? |
Giulio
Andreotti: |
[Italian
00:15:12]. |
Narrator: |
But
in the weeks leading up to the trial Andreotti has been suggesting that
someone has been coordinating the supergrass
evidence against him. He says it's an interesting coincidence. So many of the
informers have the same lawyer. |
Luigi
Li Gotti: |
[Italian
00:15:29]. |
Narrator: |
As
lawyer for five of the informers Luigi Li Gotti his
scoffs at Andreotti's claim. There are plenty of examples he says which show
that just couldn't have been a conspiracy. |
Luigi
Li Gotti: |
[Italian
00:15:44]. |
Narrator: |
So
the man who over 45 years built himself a reputation as an international
statesman, a man who's outlasted every American president since Harry Truman,
finds himself in the dock on the most serious charges imaginable, organised
crime and murder. |
Video: |
[Italian
00:16:38]. |
Narrator: |
Andreotti
denies flatly that he met or kissed Mafia boss Totò
Riina. According to the polls the court of public opinion has already found
him guilty. In Italy even movie makers agree. The reality ends up stranger
than any thriller. |
Speaker
9: |
[Italian
00:17:00]. |
Narrator: |
In
truth as in the movies the story of Giovanni Falcone had no happy ending.
They had to blow up a free way to do it but on the 23rd of May 1992 the Mafia
succeeded in assassinating the most dangerous enemy they'd ever faced. |
Giuseppe
Ayala: |
[Italian
00:18:59]. |
Narrator: |
They'd
already assassinated their closest political ally, Andreotti's friend, Salvo
Lima. Andreotti now says it was revenge for Lima's anti-Mafia stand. Others
say it was because Lima had broken his promise to protect them. |
Speaker
12: |
[Italian
00:18:32]. |
Narrator: |
Sicily
now is a province under military administration. This is a war, one that in
the 1980s took 10,000 lives in southern Italy. Falcone's successes at the
Palermo Courthouse live in permanent danger, and hardened by events few
Italians believe that the Mafia's political power is finished. |
Speaker
8: |
[Italian
00:19:05]. |
Narrator: |
In
a security bunker here at Palermo's Ucciardone
Prison, Giulio Andreotti, the most illustrious defendant in modern Italian
history will finally face his accusers. On trial with him is the entire
political establishment of post-war Italy. |
Speaker
3: |
Think
how different would have been Italy, think how different would have been the
quality of the life in our country, think how crimes we would have avoided if
Andreotti would have been put under trial, in trial 10 years ago, 20 years
ago. |
Narrator: |
Why
do you say that then? What difference would it have made? |
Speaker
3: |
I
say that because Andreotti in these years has not been only the protector of
a system of criminal power, but he has been even the symbol of the state. He
has been in the same time the friend of illegality and the symbol of
legality. |
Narrator: |
Whatever
the verdict of the court, many Italians are hoping that the Andreotti era is
finally over. |