“I am shocked. I have never said or thought anything like that. I would be crazy, right now that I have the chance to hope for freedom.” This is the incredulous reaction of Chico Forti to the opening of a file by the Verona Prosecutor’s Office on the revelations of a prisoner, who involves the Italian, convicted of murder in the United States, in a sordid story being examined by investigators. Chico, who returned to Italy last May following 24 years in prison in Florida, is in the Montorio prison to serve his sentence. It is there that he allegedly made the indecent proposal to a man close to a ‘ndrangheta clan. According to the story of his interlocutor, the former TV producer, annoyed by the heavy criticism of the Fatto Quotidiano that the day following his return had headlined «Welcome murderer», would have asked his prison companion to contact some ‘ndrangheta members to silence the director Marco Travaglio, Selvaggia Lucarelli and a third person whose name, however, the prisoner does not remember. In exchange he would have promised future favors, when he would have been freed and even a candidate with the center-right.
A story that seems like a movie script and certainly has an element of fantasy: no party in the government majority, much less Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni who welcomed him to Italy upon his return, ever considered the idea of offering a political role to the former sailor. The rest of the story is being investigated by the judiciary, which has currently opened the file without suspects or hypotheses of a crime. “I confirm the investigation, we have already notified the institutions and heard from all the possible protagonists. For us, of course, it is not nonsense but I will not add anything else,” the head of the Verona Prosecutor’s Office, Raffaele Tito, told Corriere della Sera. The investigations began last Monday, when the man in pre-trial detention who was the recipient of Chico’s alleged request allegedly confessed the circumstance to the Prisoners’ Guarantor, asking him to inform the director of Il Fatto of the matter, who, in turn, informed the Prosecutor’s Office. The Verona magistrates then listened to the prisoner, the guarantor and another prisoner who allegedly attended the meeting in which Forti allegedly requested contact with someone from the ‘ndrangheta to silence the journalists.
“Now the matter will have to be investigated further, but Chico Forti was shocked to learn what the press reported. He is astonished, distraught and lost,” said his lawyer, Andrea Radice, who yesterday had a meeting in prison with his client. The investigations of the Investigative Unit of the Provincial Command of the Carabinieri of Verona are proceeding in the utmost secrecy, to ascertain the truth of the facts and the type of crime, which might be configured as incitement to crime. In the meantime, the military have sent a service report to the Surveillance Court, the Dap, the Prefecture and even the Dda of Turin, competent for the investigation for ‘ndrangheta of the prisoner close to the Calabrian clans. On the political front, however, the left is riding the investigation to attack the Meloni government, the only one that, following decades of attempts, managed to obtain the transfer to Italy of Chico, sentenced to life imprisonment in the US for the murder of Dale Pike, which took place on February 15, 1998 in Miami and whose motive is linked to the sale of a famous hotel in Ibiza. And while President Giuseppe Conte and the 5 Star Movement are asking the government to take a strong position on the issue and provide immediate clarity, the Democratic Party has presented a parliamentary question in the Senate, urging the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, to respond urgently on those alleged relationships between Forti and the ‘ndrangheta.
#talked #ndrangheta #Tempo
2024-07-10 12:39:39
