ROME LETTER/Paddy Agnew: "When I read those things, I was left speechless. "The worst thing, though, was that right from the beginning we suspected, and these phone conversations prove it, that these people couldn't give a damn about all the dead. They never gave a damn."
Mr Giorgio Picciriello is the speaker and his words were by way of response to phone transcripts, published widely in the Italian media over the last week, involving senior management figures in ENAV, the Italian Authority responsible for aviation safety and security.
On the orders of the Milan-based investigating magistrate, Celestina Gravina, the phones of senior ENAV figures were put under surveillance some 20 days after a horrific crash at Milan's Linate airport last October 8th in which 118 people, including Mr Picciriello's brother, lost their lives.
On that foggy morning, SAS flight SK 686 to Copenhagen, with 108 passengers and six crew members on board, was travelling at full speed down the take-off runway when a privately registered Cesena jet with two crew and two passengers strayed into its path.
Following the tremendous impact, the SAS McDonnell Douglas 80 careered wildly out of control eventually crashing into a nearby hangar.
It broke into three separate pieces before bursting into flame and setting fire to the hangar.
Right from the start, it was clear that no one on either plane could have survived.
Right from the start of inquiries, too, it seemed probable that staggering infrastructural shortcomings at Linate airport had provoked the crash.
For example, Linate appeared to be functioning without either an efficient updated ground radar system or even something as rudimentary as runway tarmac markings.
As the judicial investigation into the disaster got under way, what were the concerns of the ENAV management?
The transcript of one senior management figure's small chat offers a neat risposte: "I'm certain that our man (boss) is worried not so much about what has happened, as about where it could all lead to."
Another management figure recounts: "And if the thing about Naples were to get out?
"We've had that equipment for five years now and we still haven't installed it.
"What upsets me is that no one seems to realise how dangerous all this is.
"You know it wouldn't take much for us to have another accident. You cannot even claim that. The state doesn't fund us. Here, we've tons of money."
The above management figure was at least concerned about ENAV's alleged shortcomings.
From the transcripts, however, it emerges that senior ENAV figures were more concerned about which set of friends would be awarded forthcoming public contracts, about ongoing tax-evasion schemes, about maintaining their clientelist relationship with their political masters, about doing favours by awarding jobs to the children of friends of friends, about bribes paid by this guy to that and generally about damage limitation.
Only rarely does the fate of the 118 dead feature.
In an outspoken leader, the Rome daily La Repubblica compared the Linate tragedy to the infamous Tangentopoli ("Bribesville") scandals of the early 1990s, commenting.
"The whole long story of Tangentopoli was littered with scumbag behaviour but the spectacle of such total cynicism and moral insensibility as this touches an all-time low," the newspaper said.
The government of the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, last week offered its own judgment of the ENAV authority when it, de facto, sacked the ENAV board putting the whole authority into the hands of a single managing director, Mr Massimo Verrazzani, who was appointed by the Treasury Department.
In an Italian society where graft, pull and bribery can oftimes wipe out any notion of meritocracy in public life, such scandals are inevitable.
Yet, even in Italy, there are checks and counter-balances, represented above all by the judiciary.
Many commentators have highlighted the irony of the fact that this latest scandal has come to light because of the work of Milan investigating magistrates, the very "red gowns" so often accused of political bias and a persecutory attitude by Mr Berlusconi.
La Repubblica concludes: "As for the government, it is only to be hoped that Silvio Berlusconi and friends finally understand, after the example of ENAV, that their continuing attacks on the judiciary risk being read in only one light, i.e., as the defence of a system in which until now it has been the cute hoors, the cynics and the corrupt who have prospered."