24 May 2014 – article from independent newspaper “La Voce di Trieste”.
Unofficial translation and links: Free Trieste.
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POLITICIANS, TENDERS AND MAFIA IN TRIESTE
BEFORE AND AFTER MALTAURO’S ARREST FOR THE MILAN EXPO CONTRACTS
Northern Free Port of Trieste, a strategic sector of the international Free Port of Trieste.
We are releasing La Voce No. 43 on May 31st, [2014], and indeed it is going to be an interesting read.
We are late with this issue, but for good reasons. In facts, we ended up having to spend almost one month worth of time and energy facing directly, and also analyzing, the ferocious, very violent slandering and delegitimizing campaign. This slandering campaign targets us started online and, lately, also on the local daily press following our denounce to public opinion of serious, dangerous hidden connections between politicians, bribery for public contracts, and mafias here in Trieste.
This is part of the events involving Enrico Maltauro, who’s just been arrested and confessed his involvement in the same kind of criminal networks responsible for bribery in contracts of the Milano Expo.
Such a coincidence suggests extending the investigations also to case Trieste, which La Voce is investigating and denouncing, to public opinion and to the judiciary, since many years – only for those complaints to be scandalously dismissed and covered up since 3 years.
As we have written before, we received the first warning in mid April [2014] from confidential, reliable sources, and they were about the ‘Ndrangheta’s “military” plan to unleash the notorious, illegal huge housing and building speculation worth EUR 1.5. billion over Trieste’s Northern Free Port. A project arranged and forced no matter what by local politicians, across the board, which are currently led by the Italian Democratic Party – PD.
In 2010 those politicians had rewarded the area’s illegal, speculative urbanization to the Maltauro group (with Portocittà s.r.l., later s.p.a.). Now, following Enrico Maltauro’s arrest does indeed prove his group’s involvement with the scandal of bribery in public contracts for the Milano Expo. One that does itself present anti-mafia questions.
Ever since, La Voce is denouncing firmly – and all by itself – both on the press and before criminal authorities that attempted illegal speculation against Trieste’s international Free Port, as well as raising serious anti-mafia questions. Indeed, one of the parliamentarians promoting the operation, according to the Financial Police’s investigations, is the political contact of powerful builders tied to the ‘ndrangheta.
Furthermore; Maltauro was awarded the tender without collecting the mandatory anti-mafia information, and the illegal brach of the Free Port’s boundary was carried out by an individual under anti-mafia investigations in Sicily.
In February 2013, Maltauro had unexpectedly renounced the concession. The decision was soon followed by an abnormal decision of the local Regional Administrative Court. Public authorities received complaints against both events, but have yet to investigate them. On the other side, this has finally allowed the Port Authority, chaired by Marina Monassi (daughter of a famous admiral) to retrive the whole Free Port area. In February 2014 she then proceeded to open a new call for tender for productive port activities and legitimate accessory services. It is possible answering the call until 30 June [2014].
While the cross-party, pro-speculation political group stepped out seeking the area’s removal from public property (sdemanializzazione) and illegal sale, as well as seeking to sabotage the ongoing call for tenders with press campaign more violent and irresponsible (indeed, they just drove Philip Morris to abandon its industrial plan to settle in the area. The project alone created more than 250 jobs and more indirect ones), as well as seeking to breach the Port Authority’s own legal competences and slandering Monassi in order to substitute her. La Voce has therefore lodged a criminal complaint against those politicians (the mayor of Trieste, Cosolini, the region’s President, Serracchiani, among others) for attempted disturbance of the ongoing call for tenders.
Furthermore, since 2013, a new and important local political subject, the Free Trieste Movement, is defending with increasing strength the the international Free Port of Trieste. The Movement has 6 times more subscribers than the local Italian Democratic Party (PD) as well as being the only one that attracts thousand people to its demonstrations.
Since February 2014, therefore, with the beginning of the call for tenders, the cross-party political circles that support the building speculation under anti-mafia questions found it much harder accomplishing it; and this happens because of three different, but converging reasons that all escape political control.
First of all, the current President of the Port Authority is duly supporting the Free Port’s development, second, La Voce di Trieste keeps investigations and criminal complaints flowing, finally, Free Trieste organizes popular demonstration to protect the area.
In mid-April we received from reliable confident sources information, found to be coherent, according to which the ‘ndrangheta is willing to take matters in its own hands, unleashing the illegal speculation worth EUR 1,5 billion with two extreme actions: triggering accidents or causing damages in the area in order to blame the Port Authority, as well as getting rid of La Voce‘s director (me) and Free Trieste’s leader (Roberto Giurastante).
The consequent anti-mafia alarm (both general and local) did as well include a partial disclosure of the risk online. In a normal city, this would have attracted attention from the press and solidarity from politicians, however, the ongoing silence is a good measure of the degree and probable level of hidden mafia-like infiltrations.
Indeed, in Trieste the political-authoritative establishment remains completely silent, all while an extremely violent, aggressive, private slandering campaign rages against us online, seeking to deny both the existence of the ‘ndrangheta’s threats and (against both evidences and logics) of any possible connection between politics, mafias, and tenders here in Trieste.
The reaction’s been initiated, with well-known techniques proper of propaganda war training, as a personal delegitimization campaign on Facebook, following a scheme made of misinformation and defamation that gets more extremist as time goes (reaching outright incitement to hatred) in order to portray La Voce‘s director and Free Trieste’s president as mindless idiots, secret service agents, profiteers, and so on.
This initial operation continued unleashing a “golpe” within the Movement using former managers and members of their “security” who are already compromised or face hardship. They have already committed several crimes by illegally seizing Free Trieste’s website and Facebook (with more than 12,000 contacts) only to use those to spread personal attacks and false information with increasing violence and hate, falsely claiming that Free Trieste’s President and social bodies are no more, summoning an illegal assembly to take their place and ultimately threatening to seize the Movement’s offices by force.
The campaign against the Movement from the inside quickly extended to the “system’s” local daily press, seeking an overall discredit of both the people targeted and the whole Free Trieste Movement.
The campaign’s analysis confirms that among its fiercest promoters are local individuals connectable, on various levels, with circles of money laundering and of Colombian cocaine trafficking or consumption, which are especially close to the ‘ndrangheta, as well as with the Italian system’s typical institutional deviances.
So far, id appears that neither the local police of the judiciary took prompt and effective action about it.
Furthermore, both local and national press and Italian politicians avoid broadcasting and connecting entrepreneur Enrico Maltauro’s arrest and confessions about bribes and the ‘ndrangheta’s possible involvement in the Milano Expo tenders with the attempted illegal speculation in Trieste’s Northern Free Port, as well as with the support Maltauro enjoyed for that very purpose from nearly all local politicians and authorities.
La Voce‘s investigations continues with updates and further detail on paper issue No. 43, available on Saturday, 31 May. We look forward to reactivating and updating the newspaper’s website soon.
Paolo G. Parovel