Bordighera Press – Eurilink University Press
April 2014
pp. 323
COLLANA: Coedizioni – 1
ISBN 978-88-97931-36-2
Translation by Lila Di Caprio
Years have passed since the Capaci and Via d’Amelio massacres, where the Sicilian judges Falcone and Borsellino were brutally assassinated by the Mafia. The presence of the Mafia continues to be strong, its influence on civil and political life increasingly more evident, and many areas of the southern Italy remain under the grip of Mafia clans. In the new world order, this form of organized crime has even succeeded in establishing links with other Mafia-type organizations, which have modified their means of operating to more closely resemble the Sicilian Mafia.
These Mafia operations are interwoven with terrorist activities, and arms and narco-trafficking. The money laundering of proceeds from criminal activities has created an expanding “gray area”, where the line between legality and criminality is blurred and interference has become increasingly violent. Since unification, the Italian Government’s strategy against the Mafia has oscillated between “co-existence” and “war”, the latter aimed at destroying “Cosa Nostra” and uprooting the widespread Mafia culture embedded in vast areas of southern Italy – the Mezzogiorno region.
There has been growing debate recently on whether, at the beginning of the 90’s and at the height of the “war” against the Mafia, attempts were made by government officials to actually bargain with the Mafia. In light of new judiciary investigations, the issue of the rapport between the Mafia and politics has come to the fore once again. In this book, Vincenzo Scotti, who was one of the key Italian political figures at the time of the Mafia massacres, attempts to explain what he knew and what he did in fulfilling his political role, setting out the facts objectively through documents, studies, and observations pertaining specifically to that period.
Vincenzo Scotti (Naples, 1933), graduated cum laude in law and held numerous prestigious government positions. Member of the Parliament, Deputy secretary of Cristian Democratic party and Speaker of the parliamentary group for the Christian Democrats at the Camera dei Deputati. Undersecretary of State at Ministry of Finance; Minister of Labour; Minister for Cultural Heritage and Environmental, Minister of Civil Protection Department Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has been appointed as Secretary of State at the Ministry in May 2008. Professor Scotti is presently President of the Link Campus University of Rome.