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Palace of Justice, Milan, Italy

Mani pulite (from Italian: clean hands) was a nationwide judicial investigation into political corruption in Italy held in the early 1990s, resulting in the demise of the First Italian Republic and the disappearance of many political parties. Some politicians and industry leaders committed suicide after their crimes were exposed.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Quotes about

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  • When the law, due to obvious disparities in treatment, conflicts with feelings of justice and fairness, it becomes very difficult to do one's duty without feeling like an instrument of injustice. We have therefore informed the public prosecutor of our determination to request, as soon as possible, assignment to another and different position, in which there is no stark contrast between what our conscience dictates and what the law imposes.
  • Signed by Antonio Di Pietro, Piercamillo Davigo, Francesco Greco, Gherardo Colombo.

A

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  • If Craxi had become Prime Minister, he would have made choices that would have strongly countered the emerging excessive power of the judiciary.
  • Tangentopoli had two perverse political outcomes. It saved Italian communism, which was in ridiculous agony and had to answer for its betrayals, its murders and the harm it had done to humble hearts. And it saved the regions. They were an experiment that even their proponents had now recognised as a failure: a jungle of bureaucrats and useless lovers.
  • Geminello Alvi, Una repubblica fondata sulle rendite, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 2006, p. 112.
  • I would not say that the situation is particularly worrying. We have put in place numerous controls on our spending. However, there may be grey areas that will come to light sooner or later. I will speak frankly: if any scandals erupt, they will be dealt with in an exemplary manner.
  • A judiciary that must be protected from any attempt to delegitimise it, in order to maintain its prerogative as an institution committed to restoring legality.

B

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  • Twenty-five years after the Mani Pulite investigations, Italy remains a country with a very high level of corruption. Of the politicians and businesspeople involved in the scandal, only those who have left the scene for reasons of age have gone.
  • Since 1992, a false narrative of that period has taken hold. All sorts of things have been said: that there was excessive use of preventive detention, that they were tortured to make them talk, that it was a political operation to bring down the First Republic, or even a major CIA conspiracy. This prevents us from coming to terms with that system of corruption. The hope for clean politics that existed 25 years ago is weaker today than it was then.
  • It was a missed opportunity for politics, which failed to seize the chance to truly renew the rules of the game and the people who play it.
  • The party system has apparently collapsed because there has only been a superficial change, which has recycled too many of the protagonists in the so-called Second Republic. Above all, the methods and styles of work have not changed.
  • Mani Pulite still provokes both hatred and love today, dividing detractors from supporters. This is a sign that what it exposed – corruption, the relationship between politics and business, the clashes between politics and the judiciary – is still a burning issue.
  • Tangentopoli is a system of party financing, but at the same time it is: for businesses, a system of cartel agreements that eliminates the market and free competition, inflating the costs of public works; for parties, a system of consensus building that uses public money without regard for the usefulness of the works carried out, the efficiency of the services provided, or compatibility with the state's accounts.
  • It was a major but ordinary judicial investigation, Mani Pulite, not a political operation.
  • Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite 25 anni dopo, Paper First, 2017.
  • The economic crisis, which had reduced the amount of public money available for contracts and therefore the margins for bribes, made entrepreneurs more willing to report politicians who asked them for bribes in exchange for increasingly less lucrative benefits.
  • Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite 25 anni dopo, Paper First, 2017.
  • It was not the judges in the trials, but the voters at the ballot box, who brought down the party system of the First Republic, now discredited, and forced the ruling class itself to change, at least in appearance, the political landscape.
  • Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite 25 anni dopo, Paper First, 2017.
  • Investigations reconstructed a system in which the governing parties participated directly in the distribution of bribes, while the Pci-Pds was financed through a share of public contracts awarded to red cooperatives, which then financed the party, mostly legally.
  • Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite 25 anni dopo, Paper First, 2017.
  • Craxi proved to be the only party secretary who also stole for himself and without any precautions.
  • Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite 25 anni dopo, Paper First, 2017.
  • Di Pietro has been investigated extensively, dozens of times, without a single piece of evidence of criminal activity being found against him.
  • When the wind changed, Di Pietro became an illiterate, scruffy and unscrupulous peasant. These details in no way detract from his commendable work as a magistrate, nor do they reduce by one cent the guilt of those investigated and convicted by Di Pietro.
  • Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite 25 anni dopo, Paper First, 2017.
  • (About Bettino Craxi) He had transformed the PSI into an organisation in which the political power of local and national leaders was measured by their ability to collect illegal funds and bribes.
  • Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite 25 anni dopo, Paper First, 2017.
  • Mr Di Pietro, I am writing to you not only to wish you well in your work investigating bribery and corruption, especially now that some people would like to erase and cover up everything. I am also writing to bring to your attention, as well as to your listeners, an investigation that appears today in Corriere della Sera, which could be entitled: Where are they now? The protagonists are all people who passed through your office at the time, Dr Di Pietro: namely, those investigated, suspected and accused in the Mani Pulite investigation.
  • Leonardo Sciascia wrote: “Perhaps the whole of Italy is becoming Sicily”. I think of Tangentopoli, and Captain Bellodi, the protagonist of Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl), who reflects on what should be done to defeat the Mafia: “We should suddenly swoop down on the banks: put expert hands on the accounts, generally double-entry, of large and small companies, and review the land registers”. How intelligent Leonardo Sciascia was, and how he knew how to read the news and even predict it.
  • In the face of a dangerous erosion of the general will, the collapse of civic conscience and the loss of a sense of justice, the last, extreme bastion of morality, it is the duty of the community to resist, resist, resist, as if on an unyielding line of the Piave.
  • At that time, the connection between business and politics, however murky it may have been, did not contradict the fundamental objective of the business world, which is to produce wealth.
  • No one could delude themselves that five, or even ten years of fighting corruption would change the spirit of the average Italian, their distrust of rules and institutions. The customs of this country are, unfortunately, immovable.
  • When those who had been praising us began to realise that the restoration of legality did not stop at Montedison or Palazzo Chigi, but extended to everyday life, they began to show signs of annoyance and weariness.
  • I have always noticed that the only figure defined by the Gospel as “unjust” is that of a judge: and it seemed to me an apt definition. Fascism was less hateful than this robed bureaucracy that used violence in the name of justice. In the history of Italy, if freedom had prevailed, as I now believe to be certain, the names of the magistrates of Milan, Di Pietro, Borrelli, Davigo and Boccassini would have been forever signati nigro lapillo (marked with a black stone) as figures to be remembered with horror, those of the unjust judge.
  • Mani Pulite began as a simple police operation in a case of extortion. Thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and the intelligence and determination of Judge Di Pietro, it developed to the point of involving an entire political class. The mechanism that had protected the system of corruption until then had two pillars. The first was the belief that everyone did it and that therefore the laws had essentially fallen into disuse and only fools still felt bound by them. The second was the certainty that if, by chance, someone fell into the clutches of the law, powerful friends would protect them or, at least, compensate them. Di Pietro and his colleagues succeeded in subverting these two pillars.

C

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  • Silvio Berlusconi's comparison with the Uno Bianca gang to express his personal opinion of the judiciary is an unfortunate one. Regardless of the fact that Silvio Berlusconi is currently on trial for corruption at the Court of Milan, Berlusconi would do well to reflect on the fact that the “accomplices” of this “deviant body” of the state also include the hundreds of thousands of Milanese who in recent years have morally supported the activities of the Mani Pulite magistrates against the attacks of the Rome regime, to which Berlusconi was also sentimentally attached, given that Craxi was his best man at his wedding. Does he want to compare the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office to the Uno Bianca gang? It is an outrage that a self-styled candidate for the leadership of the country should have such contempt for the victims of the criminal gang, including some young carabinieri, that he compares his legal troubles and those of his “friends” to the blood shed by those whose only fault was to stop brutal murderers. These arguments are not part of an election campaign. They are an insult to all citizens.
  • The First Republic was not killed by the judges of Mani Pulite. It had already died long before, when it closed itself off in a blind defence of its own political class. In the stormy climate of these days, an absolute and corporative defence of everything and everyone will sooner or later put us in an untenable situation with regard to public opinion.
  • Pier Ferdinando Casini, quoted in Massimo Fini, Guerra civile? No, ma uno psicolabile ne ha colto il clima, Il Gazzettino, 18 December 2009.
  • First the Pci and then the Pds never participated in the system of dividing up government posts among the parties. But this is no longer enough to explain what is happening. Perhaps we have not been able to completely escape the consociational pact. Collective political responsibility lies with all the leaders of those years.
  • A perverse intertwining of economics and politics is emerging, which puts democracy itself at risk. Faced with this danger, our political diversity cannot simply be proclaimed, but must be practised and demonstrated in our behaviour.
  • In the last couple of years, even though I received money, I no longer paid any of it to other politicians, as I had acquired an authoritative and independent position within the Milanese PSI that allowed me to answer to no one but, politically, directly to the national secretary of the party, Bettino Craxi.
  • Mario Chiesa, quoted in Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez e Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite. La vera storia, 20 anni dopo, Chiarelettere, 2012.
  • Public consensus was an essential factor in the success of the Mani Pulite operation.
  • Looking back on Mani Pulite, it is clear, at least to me, that if you want to achieve a result, you cannot delegate the task to others. Instead, in Italy, it was, and still is, in my opinion, as if the other powers had said to the judiciary, “You take care of it”, instead of committing themselves directly to the common good.
  • [In 1993] We cannot and must not emerge from Tangentopoli with a clean slate, public lynching or exasperated intransigence.
  • Craxi and Martinazzoli should have acknowledged that the DC and the PSI were the founding members of Tangentopoli.
  • Here, everyone finances everyone else. So as not to upset anyone. Typical of Italy.
  • (About an analogy between the Mani Pulite period and the 2006 World Cup] After families were destroyed by Mani Pulite without any contribution to the moralisation of the country, now, with the same actors, we will have no moralisation thanks to Calciopoli: either the clubs give it to themselves or it will certainly not be Borrelli who gives it to them. And we run the risk of having another series of suicides, attempted suicides and destroyed families. The boys of the national team are withstanding this psychological persecution and have also withstood the pain of the Pessotto affair. For this I say well done to them.
  • The magistrates of Mani Pulite have and will have my support. (5 April 1992)
  • In 1993, there was a pointless revolution in Italy, or rather a coup d'état.... Unfortunately, the Christian Democrats did not understand or underestimated the situation, busy as they were passing judgement on my alleged mental state....Today, I would say that Di Pietro could be a good mobile squad leader, one of those who are forgiven for certain excesses....As for morality, if at his age, when I was Undersecretary of Defence, I had accepted money from friends... what would have happened to me? (January 2003)
  • They have created a terrible atmosphere.
  • (About the arrest of Mario Chiesa) In this affair, unfortunately, I am one of the victims. I am concerned with creating the conditions for the country to have a government that can tackle the difficult years ahead, and I find myself with a crook who casts a shadow over the entire image of a party that, in Milan, in fifty years, in the administration of the City of Milan, in the administration of city institutions – not in five years, in fifty – has never had an administrator convicted of serious crimes committed against the public administration.
  • The judiciary must get to the bottom of this throughout Italy. Then it will be clear that Milan is the cleanest city in Italy.
  • Mario Chiesa is a scoundrel. And an idiot, too, for getting caught red-handed. (17 February 1992)
  • Bobo Craxi, quoted in Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite. La vera storia, 20 anni dopo, Chiarelettere, Milano, 2012.
  • Don't think that every month there can be a Chiesa scandal. (19 April 1992)
  • Bobo Craxi, quoted in Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Se li conosci li eviti, Chiarelettere, Milano, 2008.
  • [About the investigation pool] It is an irrefutable fact that they have a propensity to include deprivation of personal liberty among their investigative tools.
  • I have observed that if there was little virtue in what is now dismissed as the “old system”, there is just as little in what is now extolled as the “new system”. It is not at all virtuous to feign surprise at the excesses of financial interventionism in the world of private or public production.
  • Nor is it particularly virtuous to suddenly discover that the “politics of the powerful” has always had its price and has always been the subject of negotiations and deals, often bad deals. At the time, it was necessary to criticise that policy itself and not so much those deals. Otherwise, only the type of deals will change, but not the policy.
  • A system of legality is necessary. If guarantees are not in vogue, let us reflect on the fact that once the well is empty, we all risk dying of thirst before it rains again.

D

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  • There is no doubt that there have been exaggerations. But the collapse of the Christian Democrats and the PSI was a political affair, not a judicial one. Healthy parties would not have been overwhelmed.
  • There were dozens of suicides during the two years of Tangentopoli. I also did a study in Parliament. I believe it is the only scientific study available on that case. The result is that the suicides were not so much caused by imprisonment, because almost all of them killed themselves outside prison, and many even after being acquitted. It was the climate of public opinion that was unbearable for those who had been branded by the judicial investigation. So, in my opinion, rather than referring to the actions of magistrates, this refers to the inability of the newspapers and public opinion at that time to maintain a sense of proportion.
  • They portrayed us as red robes. Apart from the difficulty I have in seeing myself as a red robe, I respond by referring to the catechism: the sacraments are valid even if the celebrant is unworthy, the Mass is valid even if the priest has a girlfriend.
  • They say that Mani Pulite was a CIA conspiracy. And at the same time that it saved the communists: so did the CIA save the communists?
  • In the past, I was criticised for telling a delegation of French magistrates that with Mani Pulite we selected the most corrupt, like lions that prey on the slowest gazelles, like antibiotics that create antibiotic-resistant strains. That's how it went. If you stop the treatment halfway through, these are the results. And unfortunately, we had to stop the treatment halfway through. [...]But why does the Milan railway link cost twice as much as the one in Zurich and why, after twenty years, is it still not finished? [...] And why, after the arrests, were the subsequent contracts awarded at a 40% discount compared to before? They said it cost more because the water table was high... It seems that arrests lower the water table!
  • Illegal financing has always existed. Malagodi took money from Confindustria, Moro stood up to defend Gui. Only they had... the guts. We let ourselves be torn apart, let our parliamentary immunity be taken away.
  • Mani Pulite seems to me to be a half-measure. The magistrates did not understand much and then did not get to the bottom of it. The mother of all bribes is not Enimont but the relationship with the Sicilian mafia. Di Pietro had got his hands on Gardini: I think that is his secret.
  • Enrico Deaglio, quoted in Enrico Mannucci, I nostri anni crudeli, Corriere della Sera - "Magazine", 7 May 2009.
  • There were some who were more arrogant than others, but in the end it was all very forced. Sociological studies could be carried out on the way certain things were staged and used, not only on the socialists.
  • People accepted certain behaviours because they wanted to prevent the Cossacks from reaching St Peter's. But when it became clear that the Cossacks were no longer there, we should have adapted. I thought that in a couple of years we could have corrected many things. Instead, there was no time because everything happened much more quickly. The shadow of Yalta was cast beyond Yalta, and the post-communists took advantage of it. Since they were unable to drive us away with the dissent that our behaviour should or could have created, they got rid of us a little earlier and by other means.
  • I went from negative prejudice to positive prejudice. Someone would ride by on a motorbike and shout, “Thief! Thief!”. Today, people stop me on the street and say, “Why don't you come back?”.
  • I did not discover Mani Pulite: it arose from the outcome of the investigation into the maxi-trial in Palermo, when Giovanni Falcone received confidential information from Tommaso Buscetta that an agreement had been made between the Ferruzzi Group and the Mafia. That's where it began. Falcone tasked the ROS with compiling what would become a 980-page report, which was supposed to go to Falcone, but he was transferred.
  • They wanted to stop us. They sprang into action as soon as they realised we were about to reach the upper echelons of power. Mani Pulite was stopped, partly because while we were investigating the bigwigs in the north, we ended up touching those who had contacts with the Mafia in the south.
  • Since then, the only thing that has changed is that now there is desolation on the part of public opinion.
  • Since the end of the First Republic, new ideas and people to carry them forward should have emerged. Instead, that investigation left a great void, and figures appeared on the political scene who were there more for themselves than for anything else, starting with me. I am thinking of Silvio Berlusconi, Umberto Bossi, Matteo Salvini and Matteo Renzi.
  • Two years to carry out Mani Pulite and four to defend myself from the consequences.
  • Antonio Di Pietro, quoted in Gianni Barbacetto, Marco Travaglio and Peter Gomez, Mani pulite, p. 546.
  • I understand that it's hard to accept something so simple: that a magistrate, a public prosecutor, gets it right for once and uncovers a series of crimes by conducting a thorough investigation.
  • I also read in the newspapers that the Mani Pulite investigation was an investigation into corruption, but you know that's not true, right? It was an investigation into false accounting.
  • Mani Pulite created a vacuum: that's when personal parties started, beginning with me. But these parties last only a morning, and I am living proof of that.
  • We did what any radiologist does when you go for an X-ray to see if you have a disease; we discovered that our country was sick with endemic corruption.
  • It is not a day of celebration 25 years later. Twenty-five years have passed, but it seems to me that when I open the newspaper every morning, everything is the same as before.
  • Rather than corruption or extortion, we should talk about “environmental giving”, i.e. an objective situation in which those who have to give money no longer even wait to be asked; they now know that in that particular environment it is customary to give bribes or protection money, and so they comply.
  • Antonio Di Pietro, from an article published by Società civile, May 1991; quoted in Mani pulite, anno zero, Micromega, 2004.
  • Before I leave, I would like to put everything online so that one day someone can read it and see a different truth from what has been told.
  • Are thieves, corrupt individuals, tax evaders, mafiosi or those who – like me – uncovered them with the Mani Pulite investigation a disgrace to the country?

E

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  • After Mani Pulite, your country embarked on a path of profound change. In our opinion, Silvio Berlusconi blocked that process.
  • Bill Emmott, quoted in Annalisa Piras, Il cavaliere nero, L'Espresso, 21 August 2003.
  • Let me explain the becraun. The becraun is this: that we have all stolen here.

F

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  • Even if we admit that a magistrate has made a mistake or overstepped his bounds, this should not authorise thieves and their supporters... the vultures of due process... to cast even the slightest shadow on the commendable and never sufficiently applauded work of Borrelli and Di Pietro.
  • Craxi made the mistake of passing off his comrades who committed suicide (out of shame at having been caught red-handed) as victims of anti-socialist conspiracies:... that is a lie, honourable member. What does Di Pietro care about political aims?
  • Never has a judicial measure been more popular, more eagerly awaited, almost liberating, than this one signed against Craxi [the first notice of investigation] [...] Di Pietro did not allow himself to be intimidated by criticism or threats from half the political world (let's say the rotten regime of which the overweight Bettino is the champion) and struck low and high, even up there where not even eagles dare to fly. He struck without haste, without any impatience to get into the newspapers to reap more glory. Craxi made the mistake... of passing off his suicidal comrades (ashamed of having been caught red-handed) as victims of anti-socialist conspiracies... That is a lie, honourable member: what does Di Pietro care about political aims... The judges work calmly, in absolute serenity: they know that the citizens, having regained their dignity and critical faculties, are on their side. As we at l'Indipendente always have been.
  • I have never written that Di Pietro and his colleagues have pardoned the PDS: what evidence would I have to make such a claim?
  • Those honourable members who are now tearing their double-breasted suits (probably paid for with bribes) because many politicians end up in prison until they tell the truth are wrong to take it out on Borrelli and his wonderful colleagues. The magistrates are only doing their duty. And we are with them... [...] Prison is the best place to serve justice, to reflect and to remember.
  • Mani Pulite in 1992 was a coup d'état that destroyed the First Republic, founded on workers' social rights, and opened the door to a cycle of liberalist organisations that destroyed the working class.

G

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  • These are days of great upheaval. We must all reflect on what is happening. The sacrosanct thirst for justice cannot be quenched by trampling on people's dignity with impunity.
  • After an initial phase of genuine investigation, the inquiry took on such proportions that the situation got out of hand. And something strange happened. It was as if we were on the eve of God's arrest. Before meeting, party secretariats would inquire about the latest arrests. Companies stood still, waiting for the arrival of the Financial Police. The country was under hypnosis. Diplomats around the world wondered: what will happen in Italy? The Christian Democrats and the Italian Socialist Party had already given up. But the Communists would get away with it. At this point, Berlusconi entered the fray, blessed by Gelli. Entrepreneurs spoke out in droves. The more people were implicated, the better. Anything to prevent the country from falling into the hands of the Communists.
  • Primo Greganti, quoted in Claudio Sabelli Fioretti, Primo Greganti,, Corriere Magazine, reported in Interviste.sabellifioretti.it (21 December 2006).
  • Making me a hero reinforced the theory that the Italian Communist Party was involved like everyone else. It is an exploitation by the right.
  • Primo Greganti, quoted in Claudio Sabelli Fioretti, Primo Greganti,, Corriere Magazine, reported in Interviste.sabellifioretti.it (21 December 2006).
  • In investigations such as Mani Pulite, there is always the risk that an innocent person will be implicated. I accepted my fate so that the investigation could be completed. I support the rule of law even when the rule of law is wrong.
  • Primo Greganti, quoted in Claudio Sabelli Fioretti, Primo Greganti,, Corriere Magazine, reported in Interviste.sabellifioretti.it (21 December 2006).
  • I support the judges, I support the Mani Pulite investigation. I served my sentence in full. I even refused a pardon.
  • Primo Greganti, quoted in Claudio Sabelli Fioretti, Primo Greganti,, Corriere Magazine, reported in Interviste.sabellifioretti.it (21 December 2006).

I

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  • What frightens and worries me is the slowness of judicial proceedings in the face of a perverse intertwining of politics and business that has increasingly taken on the form of a vast, widespread and ramified system.
  • (About the request for a new Constituent Assembly during Tangentopoli) A constituent assembly is convened when there is such a rupture within the country, as happened after the war and after the fall of fascism, and this was indispensable. Even in the presence of very serious events, of a dangerous degeneration of the political system, we are not in a post-war situation, and resorting to a constituent assembly seems to me to be truly excessive.

L

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  • The people rise up when they feel their wallets are being hit and shout when they can send the powerful to the gallows. This was demonstrated by the French Revolution. But also by the tremendous populism and blind fury of Tangentopoli. :*Tommaso Labranca, Baruffe, 38/2009.


  • Those who did not live before Tangentopoli do not know the sweetness of life.

M

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  • Corruption in Italy has always been the real emergency, a factor that affects political and economic life. But the media and political circus, once the storm of Mani Pulite had passed, pretended that it no longer existed. Fuelling a factory of generic chatter, hanging in the clouds and based on nothing. The force of things then takes care of bringing us back to reality.
  • The Chiesa case was a very minor case. It acted as a detonator because the time was ripe for “Tangentopoli”, which was due to something much more complex than this: it has always been known that there was corruption in Italy, the ruling class exuded this stench of sewage that everyone could smell, the famous “holding your nose”. However, as long as the alternative to this political class in power at the time was a Communist Party, which was a facsimile of the Soviet one, based on tanks, secret police, denunciations, trials, [...] as long as this spectre existed, we could not afford the luxury of putting the ruling political class on trial and sending them to prison. It was when this nightmare collapsed with the Berlin Wall that the time was ripe for this to happen.
  • If I could have imagined how the old Italian political class would be destroyed - which deserved destruction, let's be clear - if I could have imagined that the destruction of the old Italian political class, which was largely corrupt, would have led to a situation like the current one and that the old proportional law would be replaced by the current majority law as it has been compiled, I would perhaps have defended the old class. At the very least, I would not have fought so bitterly and vigorously against that political class, which deserved to end, but which is being replaced by successors who, remember, will make us regret the old one. It is the worst thing that can be said. But I say it. Because I really cannot see what is coming out of this reshuffling of the cards.
  • Mani Pulite was a mafia settling of scores. It killed the PSI, the DC and the other parties that had built Italian democracy; thus emerged the MSI, the Lega and a party built by Publitalia employees. The cultural collapse is evident.
  • If you ask me whether the PCI was involved in the bribery system, I would say no. But if you ask me whether the PCI took bribes, I would say yes.

O

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  • When, a few weeks before the Mani Pulite scandal broke, I wrote an editorial denouncing “the Camorra members of Palazzo Marino”, Silvio Berlusconi called me, extremely irritated, explaining that I had arrived in Milan, not Naples.
  • On 21 February, four days after the arrest of Chiesa, I was visited by Ugo Finetti, vice-president of the Lombardy Region and a leading figure in Milanese socialism. He was accompanied by Paolo Berlusconi, who was not yet the editor of Il Giornale (he would become so on 16 July: and for this reason, on 20 January, Montanelli had written to Silvio informing him that the announced transfer of ownership would not alter the agreements on the independence of Il Giornale and its editor, which had been made with Silvio and “always respected”). Finetti was pale, Paolo seemed annoyed that the various appeals made to me by Fininvest representatives, asking that Il Giornale not disrupt the group's relations with the PSI, continued to fall on deaf ears. Finetti has a folder with articles from our Milanese news section, underlined with a pea green highlighter. He gives them to me so that I can challenge my fellow reporters. “The judges of the Public Prosecutor's Office,” Finetti explains to me, “make files with newspaper clippings, just like this one: then, when something happens, they find already abundant documentation and dig out what they want.” Paolo Berlusconi cuts to the chase: “We have to work with the institutions, the Region, the Municipality, the Fair, so we have to be able to maintain good relations”.
  • In those same months (January-February 1992), chief reporter Giuliano Molossi, and in his absence his deputy Ario Gervasutti, received a phone call from Bobo Craxi, leader of the municipal council. He was furious about “insinuations” about Mario Chiesa's links with the Milanese PSI, reported by our reporters. He threatened: “After the elections on 5 April, there will be a purge, many heads will roll at Il Giornale [...]. Before I speak to your boss, I repeat that you must stop bothering us. You are the usual old-fashioned fascist, Northern League, Christian Democrat newspaper”. On the 29th, Fedele Confalonieri, Berlusconi's right-hand man, calls: he is angry because a photo of Bettino Craxi with Chiesa has been published in the news section. He asks me, in a manner uncharacteristic of his usual balanced style: “Is this sabotage against Berlusconi? But if we have to antagonise Craxi in order to keep Il Giornale, we'd better give up Il Giornale”.

P

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  • Interviewer: Mani pulite was a consequence of the fall of the Berlin Wall? Pomicino: Under its rubble lay not only the Communist Party but, thanks to the young people of Via Pal at the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office, also the parties that had won the battle of history. Mani pulite was desired by the shareholder bourgeoisie led by De Benedetti. He thought he would be the new head of the future government of the country, which would bring together the financial and industrial elite of Italian capitalism with the Italian Communist Party of Achille Occhetto and Luciano Violante, which still had a strong territorial organisation.

R

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  • Di Pietro remains the symbol of a season, that of Mani Pulite, which gave hope to Milan and the whole of Italy.
  • Anni dopo, l'ex ministro Scotti confesserà a Cirino Pomicino: "Tutto nacque da una comunicazione riservata fattami dal capo della polizia Parisi che, sulla base di un lavoro di intelligence svolto dal Sisde e supportato da informazioni confidenziali, parlava di riunioni internazionali nelle quali sarebbero state decise azioni destabilizzanti sia con attentati mafiosi sia con indagini giudiziarie nei confronti dei leaders dei partiti di governo".
Una delle riunioni di cui parlava Scotti si svolse il 2 giugno del 1992, sul panfilo Britannia, in navigazione lungo le coste siciliane. Sul panfilo c'erano alcuni appartenenti all'élite di potere anglo-americana, come i reali britannici e i grandi banchieri delle banche a cui si rivolgerà il governo italiano durante la fase delle privatizzazioni (Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs e Salomon Brothers).
In quella riunione si decise di acquistare le aziende italiane e la Banca d'Italia, e come far crollare il vecchio sistema politico per insediarne un altro, completamente manovrato dai nuovi padroni. A quella riunione parteciparono anche diversi italiani, come Mario Draghi, allora direttore delegato del ministero del Tesoro, il dirigente dell'Eni Beniamino Andreatta e il dirigente dell'Iri Riccardo Galli. Gli intrighi decisi sulla Britannia avrebbero permesso agli anglo-americani di mettere le mani sul 48% delle aziende italiane, fra le quali c'erano la Buitoni, la Locatelli, la Negroni, la Ferrarelle, la Perugina e la Galbani.
La stampa martellava su "Mani pulite", facendo intendere che da quell'evento sarebbero derivati grandi cambiamenti.
Nel giugno 1992 si insediò il governo di Giuliano Amato. Si trattava di un personaggio in armonia con gli speculatori che ambivano ad appropriarsi dell'Italia. Infatti, Amato, per iniziare le privatizzazioni, si affrettò a consultare il centro del potere finanziario internazionale: le tre grandi banche di Wall Street, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs e Salomon Brothers.
  • Years later, former Minister Scotti would confess to Cirino Pomicino: “It all began with a confidential report I received from Police Chief Parisi, who—based on intelligence work carried out by SISDE and supported by confidential information—spoke of international meetings at which destabilizing actions were allegedly decided upon, involving both mafia attacks and judicial investigations targeting the leaders of the governing parties.”
  • One of the meetings Scotti referred to took place on June 2, 1992, aboard the yacht Britannia, sailing along the Sicilian coast. On board the yacht were several members of the Anglo-American power elite, such as the British royals and the major bankers from the firms to which the Italian government would turn during the privatization phase (Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Salomon Brothers).
At that meeting, it was decided to acquire Italian companies and assets, and how to bring down the old political system to install a new one, completely controlled by the new masters. Several Italians also attended that meeting, including Mario Draghi, then deputy director of the Ministry of the Treasury, Eni executive Beniamino Andreatta, and IRI executive Riccardo Galli. The schemes hatched on the Britannia would allow the Anglo-Americans to get their hands on 48% of Italian companies, including...
The press hammered away at Mani Pulite, implying that major changes would result from that event.
In June 1992, the government of Giuliano Amato took office. He was a figure in tune with the speculators who sought to take over Italy. In fact, to begin the privatizations, Amato hastened to consult the center of international financial power: the three major Wall Street banks, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Salomon Brothers.
  • This network unravels with the arrival of the investigations in February 1992. Parliamentary immunity, which had been abused, was revoked. The judiciary, which had provided protection, regained its role as guarantor of legality. This caused consternation, and for some time there was hope that a new era had truly begun. But the old resistance was far from defeated, as the difficulties in reforming the law on public procurement immediately demonstrated. A new strategy was on the horizon, and it found a favourable climate in Berlusconism.
  • I am well aware that a judicial “truth” does not exempt us from the obligation to go further. But it almost seems that, through these explanations, we are trying to free ourselves from the burden of analysing specific facts and personal responsibilities. An old vice of our political culture resurfaces: talking about general things to avoid concrete ones. Just as the far left did, everything is attributed to the dynamics of the “system”, which is invincible in its own way. The result is either a great condemnation or a great acquittal: conclusions that are apparently antithetical but essentially coincidental; which embody a political will, even understandable, to turn the page and start a new era, but which can become an obstacle to in-depth, detailed analysis. Many of the theses mentioned resemble an alibi rather than an explanation. Some, incidentally, do not even stand up to a trivial test based on the principle of non-contradiction. It is recalled, for example, that it was impossible for the PCI to enter the government. And then the PCI is blamed for not having made possible the alternation that would have immunised the system from the virus of corruption. Since the supporters of such arguments are not stupid (or, at least, not always), it is clear that their only aim is to prevent any distinction or gradation of responsibility, lumping together government and opposition parties in a single condemnation.
  • Stefano Rodotà, Le radici costituzionali della corruzione, Micromega 3/1993, p. 192.

S

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  • (About the investigations of the television programme Samarcanda) Our analysis is correct: Judge Di Pietro has shown that it was much worse than we imagined.
  • In political terms, getting caught up in Mani Pulite means not having been able to offer any viable alternative to the Italian model of underdevelopment.
  • The judges of Mani Pulite should be arrested; they are a criminal organisation with a licence to kill that aims to subvert the democratic order. (16 July 1994)
  • The system of corruption and illegal financing of the First Republic ended with Mani Pulite.
  • During those years, a great social and political transformation was underway. The Christian Democrats, the Italian Socialist Party, the Italian Republican Party, the Italian Democratic Socialist Party and the Italian Liberal Party were in decline. The Italian Communist Party was changing its name and nature. The Northern League was born, then Silvio Berlusconi arrived with his party. It was not Mani Pulite that caused all this; Mani Pulite was, at most, the midwife, the birth assistant.
  • Mani Pulite grew enormously on the confessions of those under investigation. An investigation based not on investigations but on confessions is not a good investigation.
  • Mani Pulite was like this: a container investigation, from which the various trials were opened at will by the Trio Lescano [Antonio Di Pietro, Gherardo Colombo, Pier Camillo Davigo].
  • Mani Pulite was largely played out with confessions and plea bargains. The only real trial was the Cusani trial, with Di Pietro exhibiting ultra-modern means never before seen in a courtroom, such as computer projections of diagrams. But then he would conclude with phrases like “What does that have to do with anything?”. And he won over the TV audience.

T

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  • Twenty years after Mani Pulite, there are those who refuse to accept the obvious: that Tangentopoli erupted because there were bribes.
  • Behind the lights of the city, behind its desire for Europe, behind the triumphs of its fashion designers, behind its super-elegant streets, there is a powerful network of bribes and corruption that has spared nothing and no one. For at least a decade, a sort of double-breasted mafia has imposed a system of bribes everywhere.
  • Giuseppe Turani, Una città a testa bassa, Corriere della Sera, 25 April 1992.

V

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  • Yes, those were terrible years. I was the editor of L'Unità and I think I can say that we kept the newspaper out of the judicial frenzy that was going on, even going against the arrest of Berlusconi's brother; this is because I find it difficult to accept the extension of preventive detention for those who have not committed acts against other people. I am convinced that corruption and the unscrupulous use of power should be strongly condemned: because yes, in those years the judges went beyond their boundaries, but then there was an unacceptable campaign against the magistrates; and for this reason, that period should not be repeated, in the sense of the use of judicial instruments (which, in my opinion, were disproportionate to the situation) and in the sense that the appalling corruption that this country has known and experienced, and which I cannot even say has completely ended, should not be repeated either.
  • A parliamentary commission of inquiry into Tangentopoli would truly be a test not only for the majority but for the entire country. This would put an end to thinking in terms of opposition between the persecuted and the persecutors, and we would probably discover that there are many cheats.
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