Everything the court rulings say about plagiarism in “Gomorra”, now denied by Saviano

“I am delighted that the Court of Cassation has put an end to the Gomorra affair: it was never a case of plagiarism”, wrote Roberto Saviano on social media, commenting on a ruling by the Court of Cassation rejecting Libra Editrice’s appeal against the judgement of the Naples Court of Appeal which, in 2024, ordered Saviano and Mondadori to pay damages of 10,000 euros.

As is evident from the nature of the appeal, Saviano is lying: this has always been a case of plagiarism. And the plagiarism – of certain newspaper articles published by Libra – was already acknowledged and proven a long time ago. This was no longer the subject of the dispute, but rather the amount of compensation, which Libra considered insufficient and which, on the contrary, the Court of Appeal and now the Court of Cassation deem fair. In essence, Saviano first copies and then makes false claims, insisting he is blameless: no plagiarism. 

“In 2006, whilst writing Gomorra, I included some quotations, clearly stating that they were taken from local newspapers,” says Saviano, maintaining that he did not wish to cite the source because those articles glorified the Camorra members who had murdered Don Peppe Diana. “I was ordered to pay compensation for failing to cite the source,” explains the author of Gomorra. “What they don’t say, however, is that it was actually they who were ordered to pay compensation to me because they had plagiarised two of my articles in their entirety, back when I was still unknown. They thought they’d get away with it, but it backfired on them.” This account of this highly complex legal case is as one-sided as it is dishonest. Because it omits established facts and responsibilities, including the primary one of plagiarism.

It all began with a lawsuit in 2008 accusing Saviano of unlawfully reproducing a number of articles published in the daily newspapers Corriere di Caserta and Cronache di Napoli. In 2010, the court dismissed the claim and upheld a counterclaim by Saviano, ordering Libra to pay him 5,000 euros for copying other articles that Saviano had previously published in "il manifesto" and "La Repubblica". In short, the situation had been turned on its head. Libra, however, won its appeal: in 2013, the Naples Court of Appeal ordered Saviano and Mondadori to pay Libra €60,000 in compensation for reproducing two articles and for failing to cite the source of another. In 2015, the Court of Cassation upheld the appeal lodged by Saviano and Mondadori, but only with regard to the calculation of damages: the Supreme Court judges identified a flaw in the criteria used to determine the compensation because, amongst other things, “the plagiarised work (articles published in newspapers) and the plagiarising work (the novel) were not in competition with one another, as they were distributed through entirely different commercial channels and had different audiences”. The Court of Cassation therefore referred the case back to the Court of Appeal to recalculate the compensation, but from this point onwards – 15 June 2015 (judgement no. 12314/2015) – the copyright infringement was established and final.

There are many other judgements, which do not alter the substance of the case, but only the amount of compensation. In 2021, the Court of Appeal revised the damages from 60,000 to 6,000 euros. The Court of Cassation then ruled that the compensation was too low and referred the case back to the Court of Appeal, which in 2024 increased the compensation to 10,000 euros. It is this judgement which, following the rejection of the final appeal, brings the dispute to a close. There is no doubt regarding the plagiarism. The Court of Appeal refers to ‘established infringements’ in its 2013 appeal judgement, which is ‘final on this point’ concerning two cases of ‘unauthorised reproduction’ or ‘disguised plagiarism’. Even more clearly, the Court of Appeal states that its task is to determine the damages “for the unlawful use of the two articles subject to plagiarism and, to a lesser extent, for the failure to cite the source”. Of course, this does not mean that the entire work "Gomorra" is the result of plagiarism – these were not, and never have been, the terms of the issue – but that, within a book that is the fruit of his labour and creativity, Saviano copied certain parts.

After all, the author of Gomorra was convicted of doing exactly what his accusers were ordered to pay him 5,000 euros in compensation for: unlawfully reproducing articles. And how does Saviano describe this practice? “They plagiarised two of my articles in their entirety”. The author of "Gomorra" did exactly the same thing and was ordered to pay double. As he himself says of his enemies at "Libra", Saviano too “thought he’d get away with it, but it backfired on him”. Now he’s adding forgery to plagiarism. Those are two rather serious offences for a writer and journalist.