Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi paid large sums of money to the Sicilian Mafia to protect himself and his family from kidnapping in the mid-1970s, Italy’s highest appeals court said yesterday.
Cosa Nostra’s protection “was not free”, the court said, adding that the media magnate was a victim of extortion.
“Berlusconi handed over conspicuous sums of money to the Mafia,” the supreme Court of Cassation said in a long document explaining its decision last month to quash a trial against Marcello Dell’Utri, a Sicilian who worked for Berlusconi in those years.
In the 1970s, Italian criminal organisations kidnapped wealthy people or their children for ransom. A notorious example was John Paul Getty III, grandson of oil baron John Paul Getty snr, who was held for five months by the Calabrian mob in 1973. His ear was mailed to an Italian newspaper to push the family for a ransom.
Vittorio Mangano, a Sicilian mobster later convicted of murder, lived in Berlusconi’s home in the mid-1970s, allegedly to tend the horses. Palermo prosecutor Salvatore Borsellino described Mangano as a kingpin of Cosa Nostra, before he was assassinated by the Mafia in 1992. Although Berlusconi is mentioned in the court ruling, he was not involved in the case. – (Reuters)