Original article, in Italian: Paolo G. Parovel. “La Voce di Trieste” – April 21st, 2014: LINK
EDIT: on May 4th, 2014, there was a follow-up to this article. Read it HERE.
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“State secret”
AN ITALIAN STORY OF POLITICIANS, MAFIA, AND SERVICES IN TRIESTE. READ IT RIGHT AWAY AND CAREFULLY.
[Links and unofficial translation: SV]
Lately in and around Trieste there are many writers who, under pen names, write interesting stories of corrupt authorities and mafia, which are more interesting, current, and clever than good Heinichen’s thrillers are.
They are so current and clever that they are easily confused with the evident truth, because they interpret it and foresee it in such a credible way that they seem authored by intelligence analysts who disguise as imaginative narrative the content of investigation files.
Just think about two very recent novels signed with pen names: “L’insurrezione di Trieste”, which in 2013 imagined operations of the Italian services (prevented by US intelligence) against the increasing success of the Free Trieste Movement, and now “Contratto di edizione” about connections between the State and the mafias in Italy.
This is how, last week, “La Voce di Trieste” received an anonymous flash drive with a similar novel, which merges those themes, and proposes that we publish it ourselves, because it appears that it has something to do with us, if anything, because our investigations seem among its sources of inspiration.
And, together with the draft novel, we received also authoritative recommendations to edit it, from circles that are already familiar with the subject and think foreign readers may enjoy it as well.
We handed over the draft novel to a suitable foreign editorial partner, which advised us to launch a poll on our social media to see what La Voce’s readers think about it, in Trieste and other cities, because they already known both this place and the context of the novel.
So let us publish a synopsis of the novel’s basic plot.
THE NOVEL’S PLOT
The unknown narrator, who chose style worth an intelligence analysis and uses pen name X (but it could be also a group of authors) considers that since the Cold War era, Trieste, a city on the border and with a free port, declared Free Territory but then entrusted to the Italian Government, has remained an abnormal enclave under many aspects.
According to him (or them) the main abnormal aspect is that it was, and still is, placed under the control of transversal powers that are politically shaded in Italian patriotism, are shielded by sectors of Italian services, and connected with Italian mafias in many fields, including the disposal of waste, big construction businesses, and money laundering.
The author describes this peculiar network of powers across the board, which the shield of Italian services makes more arrogant and untouchable than elsewhere, conditioning local authorities, including magistracy, and letting it act unpunished under protection that is stronger than those of the usual Italian criminality, crossing politicians, mafias, services, and authorities.
A protection that, according to X, survived its own strategic justification, because in the Italian system the services’ special structures are almost never dissolved at the end of their operation, as happen in normal States; instead, they are preserved for other uses, mostly illicit ones that are outside the State’s direct control.
Again according to X, this network of local powers across the board can therefore engage, unpunished, in all kind of crimes, in exchange of the two main political functions that are left to it.
The two functions, according to the author (or authors) are preventing the development of the city’s international Free Port, because that would outcompete Italian ports, and granting Italian power over the city, preventing the advocation of the Free Territory’s status, which after the international recognitions of Slovenia and of Croatia, is limited to the immediate Trieste area.
According to the nameless novelist, in recent years, the two functions were exercised in favoring the resignation of the old propagandas of the Italian border-area nationalism aiming first at taking advantage of Yugoslavia’s dissolution war, and then of Slovenia and Croatia’s weakness, and in attempting a massive urban housing and building speculation on the coast in a whole sector of the international Free Port.
However, the area is bound to free port status under the international Treaties that establish the Free Territory, while the material and financial means to carry that out can only be provided by Italian mafias, which not only enjoy the monopoly of construction supplies, which under Italian law are exempted from anti-mafia certification, but have enormous capital to launder, even during an economic crisis and despite risks that put off ordinary investors.
The novel continues describing the operation’s planning through politicians and parties, and the gradual reveal to public opinion of evidences of the mafias’ involvement.
Only, at the same time, the disastrous government of the city and of the port has impoverished the people, causing an escalation of reactions, which are embodies by two battling subjects: an investigative newspaper, which breaks the local media’s pact of silence about criminality and the mafia’s involvement, and a political movement that organizes demonstrations of thousand of people in the name of the full enforcement of the Free Territory’s legal status, violated by the administering Italian Government.
At this point, the novels shows repressive reactions: they don’t come from the Italian Government directly, rather, from the same local network of abnormal powers across the board, which uses rigged lawsuits and defamatory press campaigns against both subjects: personal attacks against the newspaper’s director and the political movement’s leader.
However, the complaints and local protests attract the attention of both international observers and healthy parts of Italian authorities: the massive housing speculation with mafia undertones is stranded, instead, an operation to reactivate the Free Port is launched.
Up to this point, the novel follows into chronicles, and some segments are a little bit boring for whoever has already read similar things elsewhere. But this is also where the original and engaging part of the story begins: the Italian thriller involving Mafia, services, and more.
Indeed, the author describes the escalation of abnormally aggressive reactions by the politicians who promote the housing speculation, and their attempt to prevent the reactivation of the Free Port discouraging honest investors with press campaigns so violent and hammering to become suspicious.
The novel’s hypothesis is that the criminal cartel involved (the author identifies it with the ‘ndrangheta) asks certain politicians to justify unkept promises. All while deciding to take care directly of the obstacles, getting rid of the investigative newspaper’s director and of the movement’s President, as well as sabotaging with attack the Free Port so the call for tender focusing on port activities is deserted and they can force the building speculation for good.
And there is more: not only the author follows through the city the mafia’s affiliates reconnaissance; he drafts a parallel involvement of sectors of Italian services. Instead of warning someone about the mafiosi in the city, they launch their own operation to defuse the pro-independence movement from the inside.
The novel presents us a clever ideal: Italian services activate agitators within the Movement and on social networks, for them to esalate tension, take hold of the organization from the inside with a golpe, cut its successful pro-legality policy based on international law, and substitute it with impossible political claims that only serve Italian operations against Trieste and against Slovenia and Croatia.
For this purpose, the Italian services’ operation described in the novel uses a picaresque mix of far-right activist based in Trieste, Slovene agents in Istria, esotericism, corruption, and personal blackmails to put into question the movement’s President in office, to full territorial claims agains Slovenia and Croatia, and to push the pro-independence activists to run for elections like any other Italian party.
In the novel, a discussion among agents of Italian services and an engaged local politicians clarifies the operation’s goals: politically “normalize” the movement until its gradual exhaustion, and using it for Italian operations against Slovenia and Croatia. The same way as previously done with previous local protest movement, observes an older officers (an allusion to the “Lista per Trieste”).
In the same dialogue, that officer suggests to entangle the movement in the mess of Italian separatist movements, where services pull strings ever since the Southern Tyrolleans rebellion, claiming that they only survived because Germany and Austria had their backs. Triestines however, he says, won’t be getting any help. But a younger and critical agent asks him: are we really sure about it?
Indeed, a few days later, the newspaper’s director and the movement’s president are informed about the ongoing operations of mafias and services, by observers from other Western countries, who are not fine with any of it.
Unfortunately, the draft ends here, skillfully letting the reader curious about the outcomes of the whole story, and anxiety about its evident topicality. But the author (or authors) hidden under this pen name may as well send an update or continue the novel.
THE READER’S OPINION
In the meantime, let us our readers in Trieste and anywhere else tell us what they think of the novel’s plot so far. And about its closeness with reality, considering that the author seems to know a couple of things.
Anyways, the novel, and the attention to it, even from abroad, are certain. Obviously, what is left is considering if it’s worth publishing it, and in case, how public should that be.
Paolo G. Parovel