Mafia involvement

last updated 8 January 2015

Rome

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi once considered cooperating with the Mafia to protect his son, according to wiretap transcripts printed in Rome’s La Repubblica this week. In 1988, when prosecutors were tapping his phone, Berlusconi told a friend that the Cosa Nostra had threatened to send him his son Piersilvio’s head unless he did something for them. “If I was sure of getting this thing off my balls, I would pay peacefully,” Berlusconi said. Instead, he sent his children to safety in America. The transcripts were used as evidence in the trial last year of Berlusconi’s top business partner, Marcello dell’Utri, who was sentenced to nine years for “Mafia associations.” Italian newspapers are now asking why Berlusconi never reported the threats to the police—and what it was the Mafia wanted him to do.