Marcello Dell'Utri (born 11 September 1941) is a former Italian politician and senior advisor to Prime Minister

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies f ...

. Formerly Senator in the Italian Senate.Italian Senate Official Web Site
Italian Senate, 2 June 2006 Dell'Utri has been found guilty of

tax fraud Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to reduce the taxp ...

false accounting False accounting is a legal term for a type of fraud, considered a statutory offence in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. England and Wales This offence is created by section 17 of the Theft Act 1968 which provides: ...

, and complicity in conspiracy with the Sicilian Mafia; the conviction for the last charge has been upheld on 9 May 2014 by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation which sentenced Dell'Utri to seven years in prison. The

conviction In law, a conviction is the verdict reached by a court of law finding a defendant guilty of a crime. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is, "not guilty"). In Scotland, there can also be a verdict of " not proven", which is cons ...

is final and cannot be further appealed. The third criminal section of Palermo's Appellate Court declared Dell'Utri a fugitive in May 2014, when it was discovered he had fled the country ahead of the final court decision.Italy court upholds mafia conviction against Berlusconi adviser
Reuters, 9 May 2014 After being detained in Lebanon, on 13 June 2014 Dell'Utri was extradited to Italy, where he served 4 years of imprisonment and 1 year of house arrest. He has been further sentenced in April 2018 to 12 years due to the

State-Mafia Pact The term State-Mafia Pact (in Italian ''Trattativa Stato-Mafia'') defines the negotiation between important Italian functionaries and Cosa Nostra members, that began after the period of the 1992 and 1993 terror attacks by the Sicilian Mafia (or, ac ...

Business and political activities

Dell'Utri was born in Palermo,

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

. After school in his native city, he went to

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

to study law at university. After graduation, Dell'Utri went back to Palermo to work at the Cassa di Risparmio di Sicilia (''Sicilian Savings Bank''), but by 1973 he was back in Milan where he began work for

's building firm ''Edilnord''. Late in the 1970s, he went to work at ''Bresciano Costruzioni'', but in 1980 he was called by Berlusconi and worked for ''Publitalia '80'', the advertising sales wing of Fininvest's television division, first as a manager and later as the company's chairman and chief executive.

Founder of Forza Italia

In 1994 he was one of the founders of Forza Italia, together with

and

Cesare Previti Cesare Previti (born 21 October 1934 in Reggio Calabria) is a former Italian politician, disbarred lawyer and convicted criminal. He was, with Marcello Dell'Utri, a close friend and right-hand of Silvio Berlusconi and founder of Forza Italia (FI ...

; Forza Italia was a big-tent

centre-right Centre-right politics lean to the right of the political spectrum, but are closer to the centre. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure and the economy, moving away from the nobility and ...

party, with liberal conservative, Christian democratic and even social democratic factions, whose aim was to collect all the votes of the disbanded ''

Pentapartito The Pentapartito (from Greek , "five", and Italian , "party"), commonly shortened to CAF (from the initials of Craxi, Andreotti and Forlani), refers to the coalition government of five Italian political parties that formed between June 1981 a ...

'', the governing centrist coalition which was dissolved after

Tangentopoli ''Mani pulite'' (; Italian for "clean hands") was a nationwide judicial investigation into political corruption in Italy held in the early 1990s, resulting in the demise of the so-called " First Republic" and the disappearance of many Italia ...

scandal. In 1995 Dell'Utri left Publitalia '80, the

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

company owned by Berlusconi. In 1996 he was elected to the

Italian Chamber of Deputies The Chamber of Deputies ( it, Camera dei deputati) is the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Senate of the Republic). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform identical funct ...

(lower house of the Italian Parliament); while in 1999 he was elected to the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

, of which he stayed member until 2004. In the 2001 general election he was elected as a senator in the Italian Senate, and was re-elected in 2006 and 2008.

Collusion with the Mafia

Vittorio Mangano

In 1973, Dell'Utri introduced Vittorio Mangano, already charged for Mafia crimes, to

, as a gardener and stable man at the Villa San Martino owned by Berlusconi in Arcore, a small town near Milan. Mangano's real job is alleged to have been to deter kidnappers from targeting the tycoon's children.An Italian Story
, The Economist, 26 April 2001Berlusconi accused of Mafia links
BBC news, 8 January 2003

Salvatore Cancemi and Totò Riina

In 1996, the Mafia

pentito ''Pentito'' (; lit. "repentant"; plural: ''pentiti'') is used colloquially to designate collaborators of justice in Italian criminal procedure terminology who were formerly part of criminal organizations and decided to collaborate with a public ...

(justice collaborator)

Salvatore Cancemi Salvatore Cancemi (; 19 March 1942 – 14 January 2011) was an Italians, Italian mobster and member of the Sicily, Sicilian Sicilian Mafia, Mafia from Palermo. He is the first member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission that turned himself in volu ...

declared that Berlusconi and Dell'Utri were in direct contact with Mafia boss

Totò Riina Salvatore Riina (; 16 November 1930 – 17 November 2017), called (, Totò being the diminutive of Salvatore), was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s ...

. The alleged contacts, according to Cancemi, were to lead to legislation favourable to Cosa Nostra, in particular the harsh 41-bis prison regime. The underlying premise was that Cosa Nostra would support Berlusconi's Forza Italia party in return for political favours.Berlusconi friend on trial for 'aiding Mafia'
The Guardian, 10 May 2001 After a two-year investigation, magistrates closed the inquiry without charges. They did not find evidence to corroborate Cancemi's allegations. Similarly, a two-year investigation, also launched on evidence from Cancemi, into Berlusconi's alleged association with the Mafia was closed in 1996. Cancemi disclosed that Fininvest, through Marcello Dell'Utri and mafioso Vittorio Mangano, had paid Cosa Nostra 200 million lire (100 000 euro) annually.

Antonino Giuffre' and Bernardo Provenzano

According to yet another mafia justice collaborator,

Antonino Giuffrè Antonino "Nino" Giuffrè (; born 21 July 1945) is an Italian mafioso from Caccamo in the Province of Palermo, Sicily. He became one of the most important Mafia turncoats after his arrest in April 2002. Giuffrè was known in Mafia circles as (" ...

– arrested on 16 April 2002 – the Mafia turned to Berlusconi's Forza Italia party to look after the Mafia's interests, after the decline in the early 1990s of the ruling

Christian Democrat Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...

party (DC –

Democrazia Cristiana Christian Democracy ( it, Democrazia Cristiana, DC) was a Christian democratic political party in Italy. The DC was founded on 15 December 1943 in the Italian Social Republic (Nazi-occupied Italy) as the ideal successor of the Italian People's ...

) – whose leaders in Sicily looked after the Mafia's interests in Rome. The Mafia's fall out with the Christian Democrats became clear when the DC strong man in Sicily,

Salvo Lima Salvatore Achille Ettore Lima (; 23 January 1928 – 12 March 1992) was an Italian politician from Sicily who was associated with, and murdered by, the Sicilian Mafia. He is often just referred to as Salvo Lima. According to the ''pentito'' ...

, was killed in March 1992. "The Lima murder marked the end of an era," Giuffrè told the court. "A new era opened with a new political force on the horizon which provided the guarantees that the Christian Democrats were no longer able to deliver. To be clear, that party was Forza Italia."Berlusconi aide 'struck deal with mafia'
The Guardian, 8 January 2003 If true, the allegations might explain the Berlusconi coalition's clean sweep of Sicily's 61 Parliament seats in the 2001 elections.
Time Magazine, 12 January 2003 Dell'Utri was the go-between on a range of legislative efforts to ease pressure on mafiosi in exchange for electoral support, according to Giuffrè. "Dell'Utri was very close to Cosa Nostra and a very good contact point for Berlusconi," he said.
by Philip Willan, The Observer, 12 January 2003 Mafia boss

Bernardo Provenzano Bernardo Provenzano (; 31 January 1933 – 13 July 2016) was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia clan known as the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone, and ''de facto'' the boss of bosses (''il capo ...

told Giuffrè that they "were in good hands" with Dell'Utri, who was a "serious and trustworthy person". Dell'Utri's lawyer, Enrico Trantino, dismissed Giuffrè's allegations as an "anthology of hearsay". He said Giuffrè had perpetuated the trend that every new turncoat would attack Dell'Utri and the former

prime minister Giulio Andreotti in order to earn money and judicial privileges.Berlusconi implicated in deal with godfathers
The Guardian, 5 December 2002

First Degree Conviction for Mafia Collusion (2004)

In December 2004, he was convicted in first instance for complicity in conspiracy with

the Mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...

.( it, concorso esterno in associazione mafiosa) and sentenced to 9 years in 2004.Accusa e difesa del senatore "M"; Una vicenda lunga dieci anni
La Repubblica, 11 December 2004 Dell'Utri provided "a concrete, voluntary, conscious, specific and precious contribution to the illicit goals of Cosa Nostra, both economically and politically", according to the motivation of the sentence. The judges describe him as a bridge enabling Cosa Nostra "to come in contact with important economic and financial circles." Dell'Utri described the judges' deposition as "an uncritical endorsement of the arguments of the prosecution ... 1,800 uselessly repetitive pages."Aide close to Berlusconi helped the Sicilian Mafia, judges find
, The Independent, 15 July 2005 The appeals trial began in 2006.

Conviction in Appeal (2012)

The

Appellate Court A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of ...

of Palermo sentences Dell'Utri to seven years of detention for collusion with the Mafia, up to year 1992 having been acting as a

liaison Liaison means communication between two or more groups, or co-operation or working together. Liaison or liaisons may refer to: General usage * Affair, an unfaithful sexual relationship * Collaboration * Co-operation Arts and entertainment * Li ...

among mafia bosses

Stefano Bontade Stefano Bontade (23 April 1939 – 23 April 1981) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. His actual surname was Bontate. He was the boss of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo. He was also known as the ''Principe di Villagrazia'' (Prin ...

, Toto' Riina,

and being an intermediary between the criminal organizations in Sicily and Silvio Berlusconi. One of the incriminating circumstances being the employment of the mafia boss Vittorio Mangano under the disguise of a stable keeper at Berlusconi's villa in Arcore. The appellate court has ascertained that Marcello Dell'utri was an intermediary and advisor to

up to the year 1980 and later up to year 1992 to Toto Riina and

for direct investments in Milan, Lombardy and northern Italy aimed at laundering illicit profits coming from mafia criminal activities and drug trafficking by means of financial operations in companies based in northern Italy.Dell'Utri condannato a sette anni; riconosciuti i suoi rapporti con Cosa nostra
La Repubblica, 29 June 2010I giudici: «Dell'Utri mediatore tra i boss mafiosi e Berlusconi»
Corriere della Sera, 19 November 2010

Supreme Court Final Conviction (2014)

The Italian Supreme Court definitively sentenced Marcello Dell'Utri to seven years in prison. The third criminal section of Palermo Appellate Court declared Dell'Utri a fugitive when it was discovered he had left the country shortly ahead of the impending final Supreme Court decision. At the moment the sentence was read in Italy Dell'Utri was already being detained in Lebanon being swiftly captured in

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

in a joint police operation led by

Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...

and Lebanese police forces. Investigators tracked him down to a luxury hotel in Beirut, where he was arrested by police. The Supreme Court convicted Dell'Utri of acting as a go-between for the Sicilian Mafia and the Milan business elite, including Berlusconi's companies, from 1974 to 1992.

Escape Attempt and arrest

On 11 April 2014, the 3rd Criminal Section of the

of Palermo, Sicily, issued an arrest warrant for Marcello Dell'Utri at the request of the national anti-mafia investigation department, which said it had obtained information that he might flee ahead of his hearing at Italy's highest court of appeal in Rome on 15 April.

Captured in Lebanon (2014)

Following the issue of a European Arrest Warrant and an international Red Notice by

, Dell'Utri was located and arrested in

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

in a joint operation involving Lebanese

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...

and the Italian anti-mafia investigation department. Dell'Utri was traced down to the five-star Hotel Phoenicia through the use of his credit card and mobile phone records. Dell'Utri was alone at the moment of his arrest and was found in possession of a large amount of cash. Berlusconi associate Dell'Utri arrested in Lebanon
BBC News, 12 April 2014Berlusconi ally Marcello Dell'Utri caught in Lebanon after fleeing Italy
The Guardian, 12 April 2014

Extradition Procedure

The procedure to

extradite Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdic ...

the detained Marcello Dell'utri from Lebanon to Italy had been initiated by the Italian justice ministry to the Lebanese authorities following his arrest in Lebanon on 12 April 2014. Dell'Utri remained detained in custody by Lebanese authorities till the completion of the extradition procedure. The Lebanese State Prosecution office has been, throughout the entire procedure, in contact with the Italian authorities over the issue via the official diplomatic channels and the

offices in

.Silvio Berlusconi associate to appear in Beirut court over Lebanon arrest
The Guardian, 13 April 2014
Xinhua, 12 April 2014 On 13 June 2014, Dell'Utri was extradited to Italy and booked into the Parma Criminal Penitentiary where he is serving his seven years prison term.Berlusconi assistant Dell'Utri jailed in Parma
, AGI, 13 June 2014 On 8 May 2016, his request for transfer to a prison in

Rebibbia Rebibbia is an urban zone of Rome, Italy. It was located on the road Via Tiburtina on the north-east edge of the city. Administratively Rebibbia is part of both Ponte Mammolo quarter of Rome and Municipio IV of Rome. The suburb, first developed ...

, Rome was accepted.

Other legal issues

In 1999, the ''

Corte di Cassazione The Supreme Court of Cassation ( it, Corte Suprema di Cassazione) is the highest court of appeal or court of last resort in Italy. It has its seat in the Palace of Justice, Rome. The Court of Cassation also ensures the correct application of ...

'' (the highest judicial court in Italy) had already sentenced him to 2 years and 3 months for

and

. Despite this, during the same year, he was elected as an MEP, and in 2001 he was appointed to the Italian Senate. Indeed, the Italian legal system allows the statute of limitations to continue to run during the course of legal trial. Thus, nullifying the fact of the pending charge. His case became even more complicated when a transcript of a tapped phone conversation became public in April 2006. The conversation was between the fugitive Vito Roberto Palazzolo – a notorious Mafia "banker" linked to

– and his sister in Milan. Palazzolo, convicted in Switzerland for laundering drug money, absconded to South Africa in 1986. Italy was seeking his extradition from South Africa. In the tapped phone conversation Palazzolo urged his sister to pressure Dell'Utri to disrupt the extradition attempts and offered to cut him in on construction deals in Angola. "Don't worry, you don't have to convert him, he's already been converted," Palazzolo said, implying that Dell'Utri was a link to the Mafia.Mafia, nuove intercettazioni contro Dell' Utri
La Repubblica, 26 April 2006
The Independent, 27 April 2006 On 15 May 2007, the Appeal Court in Milan sentenced Dell'Utri and Mafia boss Vincenzo Virga to two years each for attempted extortion of Trapani Basket Ball team by Publitalia, the Fininvest concessionaire. Four years later, the Appeal Court in Milan nullified the sentence and absolved Dell'Utri and Virga because there is no substance to the fact. He also claimed in 2007 to have located a number of lost diaries, purportedly written by Mussolini; these were later discovered to be forgeries.

Appeal

In October 2009,

Gaspare Spatuzza Gaspare Spatuzza (Palermo, 8 April 1964) is a Sicilian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He was an assassin for the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano who headed the Mafia family of Brancaccio. After the arrest of the Gravianos ...

, a Mafioso turned pentito in 2008, confirmed Giuffrè statements. Spatuzza testified that his boss

Giuseppe Graviano Giuseppe Graviano (; September 30, 1963) is an Italian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He also was one the men of the death squad that murdered Salvatore Contorno's relatives. He is currently serving several life sentences. He a ...

had told him in 1994 that future prime minister

was bargaining with the Mafia, concerning a political-electoral agreement between Cosa Nostra and Berlusconi's party Forza Italia. Spatuzza said Graviano disclosed the information to him during a conversation in a bar Graviano owned in the upscale Via Veneto district of the Italian capital Rome. Dell'Utri was the intermediary, according to Spatuzza. Dell'Utri has dismissed Spatuzza's allegations as "nonsense".Lawyer rejects turncoat's claims linking Berlusconi to mafia
Adnkronos International, 23 October 2009 Spatuzza's allegations were included in the prosecution of Dell'Utri's Mafia collusion appeal and Spatuzza repeated his allegations at the Appeal Trial.Mafia witness 'boasted of links to Silvio Berlusconi'
BBC News, 4 December 2009 Prosecutors argued that the Mafia spread panic with a campaign of terrorist bombings in mainland Italy in 1993 so that Forza Italia could step onto the political stage in the guise of national saviour. The bombings stopped after Berlusconi first won power in 1994.Silvio Berlusconi ally had no Mafia links after 1992, court rules
The Guardian, 29 June 2010 On 29 June 2010, the Palermo Court of Appeals reduced the 2004 nine-year sentence for collusion with the Mafia to seven years. In reviewing the previous sentence, the appeals court said the conviction stood for acts committed by Dell'Utri prior to 1992, while he was acquitted for charges after that year. The prosecution had asked that the sentence be increased to 11 years.
ANSA, 29 June 2010 The judges took six days to consider their decision, an extraordinary long time for deliberations.

Further indictment for "mafia dealings" that took place in the 1990s

On 31 October 2017, Dell'Utri is also officially enrolled in the register of people involved in underground negotiations between corrupted representatives of the Italian government and the mafia organizations in sicily (lit.

, "trattativa stato mafia") upon request of the Public Prosecutor, having the prosecutor's office obtained new relevant informations coming from the transcripts of telephone conversation in Palermo by the

mafia boss A crime boss, also known as a crime lord, Don, gang lord, gang boss, mob boss, kingpin, godfather, crime mentor or criminal mastermind, is a person in charge of a criminal organization. Description A crime boss typically has absolute or nearl ...

involving Dell'Utri together with other people implicated in the negotiations. On 20 April 2018, he was sentenced to a further 12 years in prison.

Statements related to the mafia boss Vittorio Mangano

After the Appeals court ruling, Dell'Utri expressed his admiration for the late Vittorio Mangano, a convicted Mafioso who up to his death in prison denied that any link existed between Cosa Nostra and Dell'Utri and Berlusconi. "He was a sick inmate who was asked to testify against me and Berlusconi and always refused to do so. If he had, anything he would have said would have been believed. But he preferred to stay in prison, and die there, rather than to make unjust accusations," Dell'Utri said. "He was my hero. I don't know if I could have resisted as much as he did."

Biblioteca di Via Senato and other associations

Dell'Utri has been also the founder of ''Biblioteca di via Senato'', ''l'Erasmo. Trimestrale della civiltà europea'', ''Il Domenicale''. He is also president of the cultural association ''Il Circolo Giovani''.IV Convegno Nazionale de "Il Circolo Giovani"
Radio radicale, 26 November 2006

References

External links

Official Site

Forza Italia party Site

Sentenza Dell’Utri
The verdict for complicity in conspiracy with

Fininvest
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dell'Utri, Marcello 1941 births Living people Forza Italia MEPs Italian people convicted of tax crimes Italian politicians convicted of crimes Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy) Members of the Senate of the Republic (Italy) MEPs for Italy 1999–2004 Politicians from Palermo Politicians convicted of fraud Criminals from Sicily