The smear campaign against Mulè: "not under investigation" but vilified. The leak from the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office

There is a new method for destroying someone’s reputation without investigating them: include them in the case files even if there is nothing criminally relevant about them, bring them up at the right moment, link them to a wheeler-dealer or a mafia member, and then diligently add that ‘they are not a subject of the investigation’. A clarification which, in the smear campaign, becomes a fig leaf. Since last March, the Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Giorgio Mulè, has been experiencing this peculiar treatment first-hand. The timing is telling: the media and judicial smear campaign against Mulè, based on nothing, began in the wake of the referendum on justice – the culmination of an election campaign in which the Forza Italia representative was one of the most prominent faces campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote and one of the judiciary’s harshest critics.

On 26 March, three days after the referendum, Mulè’s name appeared in connection with an investigation launched by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office into an alleged scheme involving rigged tenders and slush funds, which involves certain departments of the Ministry of Defence, Terna, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana and the National Strategic Centre. Mulè, a former Under-Secretary of State for Defence, is not under investigation and has not even been interviewed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office as a witness. Yet some newspapers published the story claiming that one of the suspects, the fixer Antonio Spalletta, “is said to have intervened ‘through the (actual or boasted) intervention of a politician (Mulè, ed.)’ to facilitate the promotion of Pier Francesco Coppola to Air Force general”. Within minutes, Mulè found himself vilified on websites and social media, despite not being under investigation, simply because he was mentioned by someone suspected of boasting.

“A smear campaign,” comments Mulè, attacking the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office headed by Lo Voi: “The fact that my name – which does not appear in the search and seizure warrants, as I am obviously not under investigation nor in any way involved in this inquiry – was leaked to the press constitutes an act for which the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has proved incapable of protecting the reputation of a citizen unconnected to the investigation, will be called to account. Of course, it is entirely coincidental that this happened immediately after the referendum campaign, during which I was fiercely opposed to the head of that public prosecutor’s office, who is the central figure in the investigation.” “I do not accept these claims,” replies Public Prosecutor Lo Voi, adding that “the public prosecutor’s office has nothing to do with” the leak of confidential information (although there is no indication that any internal investigation into the leak has been opened).

On 8 April, the focus shifts to Milan. Il Fatto publishes a wiretap from 2021 in which the state witness Gioacchino Amico claims to know Mulè and to have had dealings with him at the time of his appointment as Under-Secretary of State for Defence. The contents of the wiretap had remained in the drawers of the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office for five years because it was evidently irrelevant from a criminal law perspective and did not require any further investigation. Suddenly, however, after five years, it resurfaces, and that is enough to prompt Il Fatto to link Mulè’s name to an investigation into ‘the Mafia and politics’. “A disgrace,” as the centre-right MP puts it: “It is the fate of those who end up on the ‘list of those smeared’, of those who – for heaven’s sake! – are not under investigation, are in no way involved in an inquiry, yet are nonetheless subjected to a barrage of mudslinging.”

“After the starter in Rome, it’s now Milan’s turn. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there will be plenty more ‘courses’ to come,” concludes Mulè.

And indeed, the third instalment arrived yesterday, when Il Fatto and Domani published a ‘follow-up’ to the Rome-based investigation (co-ordinated by deputy public prosecutors Giuseppe De Falco and Giuseppe Cascini), with Spalletta once again at its centre. In the new documents from the investigation, Mulè’s name is once again linked to alleged paid dinners and recommendations. And once again, the standard line is: ‘He is not involved in the investigation’. The MP is not under investigation and, in fact, has not (yet) been called to give evidence by the prosecutors.

The new frontier of media and judicial pillorying has therefore struck again. Mulè’s reputation has once more been tarnished without him being directly involved in the investigation and on the basis of evidence that is irrelevant to the criminal case. Moreover, this comes at a politically significant moment, given that in recent weeks Mulè’s name has been circulating as a possible centre-right candidate for the presidency of the Sicilian region. Yet no one – from Minister Nordio to the High Council of the Judiciary – is asking the senior officials at the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office why they failed to exercise oversight to prevent this irrelevant material from ending up in the investigation files, only for it to subsequently be made public.

Ermes Antonucci