The tragic farce of the Florence public prosecutors: at the Baiardo trial, mafia boss Graviano is once again being used to smear Berlusconi

Yesterday, the mob boss Giuseppe Graviano told the judges in Florence, via video link, that his grandfather Filippo Quartararo set up a company with Silvio Berlusconi in 1969–70. This is yet another episode – and probably not the last – in a grotesque trial that was supposed to concern Salvatore Baiardo, accused of aiding and abetting and aggravated slander against Massimo Giletti, but which has instead turned into a rehash of the trials of Marcello Dell’Utri and Silvio Berlusconi, the latter of whom has since died and cannot defend himself.

Graviano spoke of an investment of 20 billion lire and a private document listing the names of the investors, though he added that he could not confirm them with certainty. He recalled meetings with Berlusconi, but could not say who he was accompanied by in December 1993. And it is the same story that Graviano had already told in 2020, which was also unsubstantiated at the time and deemed entirely unreliable by the public prosecutors in Caltanissetta. Contrary to that unreliable account, however, there are the trial records and a final judgement, handed down in the name of the Italian people.

In 2004, the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office ruled out any inflow of external capital into Fininvest on the basis of advice from an official at the Bank of Italy; on 16 October 2025, the Court of Cassation upheld a ruling stating that, to date, no money-laundering activities by Cosa Nostra within Berlusconi’s companies have ever been proven in court.

Graviano recounts the same old stories, repeated with a few minor variations, and at this stage one might well conclude that they serve only to muddy the waters. Indeed, what all this has to do with the alleged defamation of Giletti remains the mystery of the trial. The mechanism, however, is no mystery. A dead man is in no hurry to defend himself, and he can be put on trial indirectly as many times as one likes, in any courtroom, on any charge concerning someone else.