Former mayor of Rome Gianni
Alemanno vowed Wednesday that he and his administration were
remote from any offenses or collusion with organized crime.
Speaking to the parliament anti-mafia commission in Rome,
Alemanno called himself "completely remote from any hypothesis
of offenses or conspiracies attributed to me in the Mafia
Capitale probe".
"There was no idea, not even a distant one, of taking a
similar risk inside city hall. Not only the politics and the
bureaucrasy seemed unaware of this danger, but no signals came
from other state or local institutions, from political powers,
from journalistic revelations or from cultural debate".
In 2014, more than three dozen people, including the
underworld figure Massimo Carminati, were arrested on
allegations of running a corrupt network that infiltrated Rome's
public administration. Carminati was charged with fraud, money
laundering, embezzlement and bribing public officials.
"I have never personally met Massimo Carminati," Alemanno
continued.
He said that after an article appeared in L'Espresso in
2012, he asked his collaborators from the rightwing group
whether they had ever had any dealings with Carminati, who was
formerly associated with the far-right terrorist group Nuclei
Armati Rivoluzionari and the criminal gang Banda della Magliana.
Alemanno said he received clear denials from except for the
admission of a single, old acquaintance that was private in
nature and had "no political, social or economic value".
"The only personality (arrested in the Mafia Capitale
probe), in fact, that all of the political parties and the
administrative structure of city hall had dealings with was
Salvatore Buzzi."
Buzzi was arrested and accused along with Carminati of
running the network that was at the centre of the Mafia Capitale
probe.
"In all of the 1,123 pages of the judge's court order,
there does not exist a single reference to an agreement between
Buzzi and me".
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