“Decaro? I take nothing back” –

Valerio Staffelli handed over the Golden Tapir to the governor of the Puglia Region Michele Emiliano, while the “Bari case” rages following the maxi-police operation relating to the possible influence of the clans on the 2019 municipal elections. On 23 March Emiliano told of an alleged meeting, which allegedly took place years ago, with the sister of the boss Capriati and in which the current mayor of Bari Antonio Decaro, then councilor, also participated, sparking a storm. “This is how Antonio Decaro’s anti-mafia campaign began. He knocks on the door, he says to me ‘You see I was in St. Peter’s Square and someone put a gun, or a hard finger, behind my back’. I took him, the two of us went to the house of Antonio Capriati’s sister, who was the boss of that neighborhood, and I went to tell him ‘You see that this engineer is my councilor, he has to work, so if he needs to drink, if he has need assistance, I’ll entrust him to you’”, Emiliano’s version of the couple’s incursion into old Bari, which however was denied by Decaro.

But on Striscia la Notizia, a Canale5 programme, the former magistrate holds the point: «I don’t take anything back. My memories are quite clear, but if a person tells me that he wasn’t there I have to take note and note that he may be remembering me wrong. The Tapir is still deserved, I might have told it better.” Emiliano is on his third Tapir in his life.