Antonio Ingroia

Antonio Ingroia in 2012

Antonio Ingroia (b. March 31, 1959) is a lawyer, journalist, former magistrate and Italian politician. He founded the anti-corruption electoral alliance Civil Revolution in February 2013.

Quotes

• Un magistrato deve essere imparziale quando esercita le sue funzioni ma io confesso che non mi sento del tutto imparziale. Anzi, mi sento partigiano, sono un partigiano della Costituzione.
  • A magistrate must be impartial when he performs his duties but I confess that I do not feel completely impartial. Indeed, I feel partisan, I am a partisan of the Constitution.
  • as quoted in Ingroia va dal Pdci: Io, pm partigiano si apre un caso., Corriere della Sera, (October 31, 2011)
  • in response to criticism of his attendance of the October 2011 congress of the Party of Italian Communists.

• Azione Civile è un movimento civico puro, fuori dai partiti, che oggi avvia una campagna di adesione aperta ai cittadini che credono in questo progetto per radicarsi sul territorio.
  • Civil Action is a pure civic movement, outside the parties, which today initiates a bonding campaign open to citizens who believe in this project taking root in the territory.
  • Ingroia presenta nuova formazione, Azione Civile, ANSA.it, (May 2, 2013)
  • at the launch of Civic Action, successor of Civil Revolution

• Today we have a more civilized mafia and a more mafia-like society. A mafia that increasingly wears suits and ties and a society that changes its clothes too many times a day and chooses to disguise itself. In short, we have entire sections of society that have now internalized the behavioral models of mafiosi. And you can see it in all areas.
  • From an interview of Saverio Lodato, l'Unità, 11 November 2006

• (About the ideal government) I am a candidate for Prime Minister, so I will be the president of the Council and also take on the role of interim Minister of Justice. Travaglio would be an excellent choice for the Ministry of Information, as he is outside the political sphere, while I would put Fiorella Mannoia in charge of Culture. Then I would put the economist w:it:Vladimiro Giacché in charge of the Economy, a worker in charge of Labor, and a police officer in charge of the Interior. We need competent people, not like Castelli, who was an engineer, and Carfagna, let's not even go there...

Elezioni, che canzoni mono-tone, corrierefiorentino.it, 18 February 2013

• As a people, we have been stripped of monetary sovereignty, but not only monetary sovereignty. We have been stripped of financial sovereignty, we have been stripped of political sovereignty. We are subjects, we are not sovereign in our own country. [...] And this lack of sovereignty, this expropriation of sovereignty, is not an accident, it is not a coincidence. It is part of a precise plan, which is not only Italian [...]. I believe that it is a rearguard battle to say, “We want another Europe, we will build another Europe”: within these institutions and within this Europe, another Europe is impossible. We must tear down this Europe, as it is today, as it is constructed, with its institutions and the primacy of finance over politics that has been established. [...] We must withdraw from the European treaties.
  • From a speech at the assembly “Implementing the Constitution,” Naples, September 30, 2017. Video available on “Youtube.com”

• (About Pietro Grasso) He was a magistrate of great experience, courage, and professional ability, but it must be remembered that he became national anti-Mafia prosecutor thanks to a law passed ad personam by Silvio Berlusconi, which excluded Gian Carlo Caselli, who had more qualifications than Pietro Grasso. Grasso himself said in a famous interview that the Berlusconi government deserved a special award for its anti-Mafia activities. Pietro Grasso is certainly not left-wing, nor has he ever been in his brief forays into politics. Even when Caselli was appointed prosecutor of Palermo in 1992, Grasso was his opponent, the candidate of the then Minister of Justice Martelli. Therefore, he did not have a left-wing position, as the founders of Liberi e Uguali do. He was then supported by the Berlusconi government against Caselli. [...] Grasso has always taken a very cautious stance on many of the Palermo prosecutor's initiatives. He did not want to sign the Palermo prosecutor's appeal against the acquittal of Andreotti in the first instance. When he was my boss, he was very lukewarm about the investigations I had carried out into criminal networks, the State-Mafia negotiations, and the Dell'Utri trial. He has always been a prudent man, legitimately so, but also a cautious magistrate.
  • Grasso, Ingroia: "Non è mai stato di sinistra. Fu cauto su Andreotti, trattativa Stato-mafia e Dell'Utri", IlFattoQuotidiano.it, 4 December 2017

• Borsellino once, we were at his house in Marsala one evening, so before he even arrived in Palermo, I remember it clearly even though he didn't give me any precise explanations about it, he said to me, and I quote: "w:it:Pietro Giammanco is a man of Lima," a statement that obviously upset me.
  • “Falcone seguiva la pista di Gladio”: le indagini top secret di Borsellino, ilfattoquotidiano.it, 22 May 2018

"I poteri occulti premono sui magistrati"

From an interview of Antonio Massari, La Stampa, 21 March 2008, p. 11

• I would define the case De Magistris as emblematic of what happens when a magistrate finds himself isolated and overexposed, managing an extremely complex and delicate investigation into a tangle of legal and illegal interests involving diverse individuals and circles, on the cusp where criminal, political, and institutional spheres meet. As often happens in areas where integrated criminal systems operate. And I am referring, of course, to the criminal systems associated with the mafia in Sicily and the 'ndrangheta in Calabria.
• The union between occult powers and the mafia is the famous “big game” that Giovanni Falcone was working on. And for which he probably died: and the real instigators of the Capaci bombing have never been found.
• As far as we have been able to ascertain, De Magistris' investigation went far beyond what has become widely known. It went well beyond the wiretapping of Clemente Mastella or the inclusion of Romano Prodi in the register of suspects. I believe that the core of the investigation was precisely the intertwining of criminal powers and other powers in the area. I believe that his case cannot be addressed without taking into account the reality in which De Magistris, often in institutional isolation, operated.
• (About the takeover of the ‘Why Not’ investigation) De Magistris calls it illegitimate, I call it unthinkable. [...] My feeling is that we found ourselves in a situation where autonomy and independence, both internal and external, reached a breaking point. We are truly in a moment of crisis for the rule of law.

"La morte breve di molti processi"

From an interview of Natalia Lombardo,l'Unità, 25 January 2010

• For some time now, the Constitution has been under attack in some fundamental areas. The autonomy and independence of the judiciary has been under constant siege for years, as has the principle of equality. Article 3 of the Constitution, thanks in part to an upright judiciary, has not remained an abstract principle. All the most recent bills, however, aim to create a two-tiered justice system: efficient and harsh with the weak, soft and sluggish with the powerful. A justice system that ensures impunity for the powerful.
• (About the law on the so-called “short trial”) Should be defined as: the law of the short death of trials. It is right to ensure speedy trials, but here we have a trial that remains long and only sets a maximum time limit that can never be met. We need a reform of the justice system that shortens the timeframes but gives the judiciary human and operational resources and funding. There are 30 percent shortages in the public prosecutor's offices in Palermo and Catania, cuts in funding for overtime for staff and court clerks. Hearings are only held in the morning. At full speed, the timeframes would be halved.