Graviano’s strategy to smear Berlusconi yet again

Two appeals against final convictions and, above all, a document to be circulated amongst Italians setting out his own “truths” (or, rather, hoaxes) regarding the Mafia massacres of 1992–1993 and the alleged links between Silvio Berlusconi and Cosa Nostra. According to information obtained by Il Foglio from reliable sources, this is the legal and communications strategy that the former Cosa Nostra superboss Giuseppe Graviano – who has been in prison since 1994 after being sentenced to life imprisonment for the massacres in which Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were killed, for the 1993 attacks in Rome, Florence and Milan, and for the murder of Father Pino Puglisi. The applications for review are expected to concern precisely the convictions handed down to Graviano for the Via D’Amelio massacre, in which Borsellino was killed on 19 July 1992, and for the murder of Don Puglisi. The former Brancaccio boss continues to maintain that he had no involvement in either incident. But it is above all the second initiative – that of presenting his own version of events to the Italian public regarding what took place during the two-year period of terrorist attacks between 1992 and 1993 – that stands out as remarkable.

Graviano is very keen to speak, which is why he has asked to be heard by the investigating magistrate in Caltanissetta, who has been called upon to rule on the request for the case to be dismissed put forward by the prosecutors on behalf of former senator Marcello Dell’Utri, who is under investigation for complicity in the Capaci and Via D’Amelio massacres (Silvio Berlusconi was also under investigation for the same offence in this case, but the case against him was dismissed following his death). On 14 September, the investigating judge will decide whether to hear Graviano. Even if the decision is favourable, however, Graviano will not have the opportunity to speak in public, as he did in 2020 during the trial concerning the "'ndrangheta responsible for the massacres", but only to be heard by the public prosecutors behind closed doors as part of the investigation. Hence the unprecedented idea of drawing up a document – a statement – to be circulated amongst the Italian public, in which he would once again present a mix of insinuations and allusions, without a shred of evidence (but peppered with new outlandish details), regarding his past dealings with Silvio Berlusconi.

In 2020, appearing before the Court of Assizes in Reggio Calabria, Graviano claimed to have met Berlusconi on three occasions between 1982 and 1993, adding that the Arcore-based businessman had run out of the money belonging to his grandfather and other Palermitans who had invested in the construction industry in northern Italy during the 1970s. These claims were not backed up by any evidence. Indeed, as early as 2004, the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office, during the trial against Dell’Utri, had ruled out the possibility of external capital flowing into Fininvest, based on an expert report commissioned from an official at the Bank of Italy. And that is not all. On 16 October 2025 – as we revealed in Il Foglio, causing panic amongst professional anti-Berlusconi campaigners – the Court of Cassation debunked all the hoaxes about “Berlusconi the mafioso”, confirming a ruling by the Palermo Court of Appeal which states that “to date, no money-laundering activity by Cosa Nostra within Berlusconi’s companies has ever been proven in court”, neither during the group’s initial formation nor in the decades that followed. The judges also ruled that the claim that Berlusconi paid sums of money to Dell’Utri to secure his “silence” regarding the existence of unproven agreements with Cosa Nostra is “unproven and illogical”.

In short, the ‘revelations’ made by Graviano in 2020 are nonsense. And it is no coincidence that the boss was described by the public prosecutors in Caltanissetta as ‘completely untrustworthy’. 

This is also because he “has never shown any genuine willingness to cooperate with the authorities or, at the very least, to distance himself from the group”.

Now, however, with rather peculiar timing (a year to go before the general election), Graviano would like to peddle his nonsense about Berlusconi being a mafia figure directly to the Italian public. His detention under Article 41-bis is no obstacle: Graviano can communicate in writing with his lawyer and even with members of parliament. The dissemination of the content of these communications would then be inevitable and a foregone conclusion.

Whilst awaiting the implementation of this plan, Graviano will have the opportunity to repeat some of his unreliable revelations on 21 September at the court in Florence, where he has been summoned as a witness in the trial against Salvatore Baiardo, who stands accused of aiding and abetting and aggravated slander against the journalist Massimo Giletti. A trial that the Florentine prosecutors, through a clever ploy, have transformed into yet another platform from which to sling mud at Berlusconi and Dell’Utri.