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Piercamillo Davigo

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Piercamillo Davigo

q:it:Piercamillo Davigo (1950) is an Italian magistrate, a foermer meber of the pool Mani Pulite and of the Italian High Council of the Judiciary.

Quotes

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  • Abroad, it takes courage to commit a crime; in Italy, it takes courage to remain honest.
  • They have 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.
  • The progressives will destroy us, and they will do so more cunningly than those on the center-right: without being noticed, without shouting, and this time without even encountering obstacles from the other side. Everyone will agree when it comes to disarming us.
    • As quoted in Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite. La vera storia, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 2002
  • The problem is not so much that there are 200,000 lawyers, but that there are 15,000 more every year. And since they practice law for 40 years on average, 15,000 times 40 equals 600,000 lawyers. I don't believe that this country's gross national product can support six hundred thousand lawyers, but I'm under no illusion that a ruling class that has failed to get the better of the weak taxi drivers' lobby will be able to get the better of the much more powerful lawyers' lobby.
    • 2008 Trento Economic Festival. Video available on Youtube.com
  • In Italy, it pays to be a criminal.
  • In Italy, it pays to break the law because the law protects those who break it much more than those who suffer from its violations.
  • In the past, I was criticized 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.
  • I envy university professors: they are paid to ask questions to people who know nothing and who do everything they can to say something, while I question people who know everything and do everything they can to say nothing at all.
    • From a statement made during a meeting at the “Centro Balducci” in Zugliano (UD), May 20, 2011. Video available on Youtube.com
  • In my opinion, Italy's mistake was to always say, “Let's wait for the verdicts.” No, we're not waiting for the verdicts. [...] If I invite my neighbor to dinner and I see him leaving my house with my silverware in his pockets, I am not obliged to wait for the Supreme Court's ruling before inviting him to dinner; I stop inviting him to dinner immediately.
  • Italy had so many appeals to the European Court of Human Rights against the unreasonable length of trials that the European Court, which had said that a trial should be considered unreasonable if it took more than two and a half years from the start to the first instance ruling, had to raise this assessment to three years because it could no longer manage to deliver judgments in two and a half years due to being overwhelmed by appeals from Italy. This explains why they get angry with us.
    • 2008 Trento Economic Festival. Video available Youtube.com
  • The difference between a citizen and a subject is this: a citizen has few obligations and few prohibitions imposed on them, and if they respect these, they are a free person; a subject is a person on whom millions of obligations and prohibitions are imposed, the violation of which is usually tolerated, but if they raise their head, they are given a list of all the violations they have committed up to that point.
    • From the rpesentation of the book entitled Farla Franca. La legge è uguale per tutti?, Modena, 13 March 2012. Video available on Youtube.com
  • The modern Western state is based on the principle of the separation of powers. The separation of powers makes sense if the disagreements between the powers are physiological, because if they always agreed, there would be no need for the separation of powers. A little bit like the rights of freedom. The rights of freedom were granted in order to be able to speak ill of those in power, because there were already courtiers to speak well of them.
    • Otto e mezzo, La7, 15 February 2010. Video available on La7.tv
  • But why does the Milan railway link cost twice as much as the one in Zurich and, after twenty years, still not be 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!
  • No one is put in prison to make them talk; they are put out if they talk, which is a different thing. But who would ever give money to someone who, once arrested, lists all those who gave it to them? Or who would ever take money from someone who, when arrested, lists all those they paid? They become unsuitable for committing those crimes: they are no longer dangerous.
  • When there is less money circulating in people's pockets, citizens are more easily outraged.
  • When Cuccia, president of Mediobanca, was interviewed by journalists after testifying as a person informed of the facts at the Ravenna Public Prosecutor's Office, he replied to a journalist's question about whether Ferruzzi Finanziaria's financial statements were false: “I have never seen one that wasn't.”
    • Otto e mezzo, La7, 15 February 2010. Video available on La7.tv
  • Once I was trying to explain amnesty to a group of Californian judges who were asking us why alternative procedures did not work in our country. They understood complex issues, but when we explained that amnesty is a law that forgives everyone, they were convinced that we were joking. You see, Carl Schmitt argued that all concepts of modern European public law are secularized theological concepts. The secularization of plenary indulgence gives rise to amnesty, pardon, and various forms of remission. With one difference: the Church demands repentance, the state does not.
    • il Fatto Quotidiano, 31 October 2013

Davigo: «I politici continuano a rubare, ma non si vergognano più»

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From an interview of Aldo Cazzullo, Corriere.it, 22 April 2016
  • My colleagues and I tore away the veil of hypocrisy. And that made things worse.

We magistrates are like cuckolds: we are the last to know anything, because when we do know, the trials begin.

  • After Mario Chiesa's arrest, Craxi said that not a single PSI leader in Milan had been convicted with a final sentence, except for the “mariuolo” (thief). No one burst out laughing. The veil of hypocrisy still held.
  • [“And now?”] They haven’t stopped stealing; they’ve stopped being ashamed. They brazenly claim what they used to do in secret. They say things like, “We do what we want with our money.” But it’s not their money; it’s the taxpayers’.
  • [Regarding the system of contracts negotiated between parties and companies] There are no innocents; there are only guilty parties who have not yet been discovered.
  • Forlani made a fool of himself at the Enimont trial. Evidence was found against Craxi, and he was convicted. We did not find evidence against others. The Italian Communist Party was financed by cooperatives in a declared and therefore legitimate manner. But in Milan, where they participated in the distribution of bribes, we put several communist leaders on trial.

There are not too many prisoners; there are too few prisons.

  • Italy is the European country with the lowest number of prisoners in relation to its population. And it is the country of the Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, the Camorra, the Sacra Corona, and widespread corruption. Of course we need new prisons. With borders now disappearing, countries with stronger criminal repression export crime; those with weaker criminal repression import it.
  • Once in San Vittore, I met a Chilean pickpocket. He had been arrested four times in a month. He greeted me with a smile: “What a beautiful country, Italy!” He had previously been arrested in Ottawa and had spent two years in prison.
  • In my opinion, magistrates should never be involved in politics. This is because they are chosen on the basis of competence, and having guarantees, they are not used to following the criterion of representation. This is why magistrates are often terrible politicians.
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