Mani pulite

"If Craxi had become Prime Minister, he would have made choices that would have strongly countered the emerging excessive power of the judiciary."

"Tangentopoli had two perverse political outcomes. It saved Italian communism, which was in ridiculous agony and had to answer for its betrayals, its murders and the harm it had done to humble hearts. And it saved the regions. They were an experiment that even their proponents had now recognised as a failure: a jungle of bureaucrats and useless lovers."

"I would not say that the situation is particularly worrying. We have put in place numerous controls on our spending. However, there may be grey areas that will come to light sooner or later. I will speak frankly: if any scandals erupt, they will be dealt with in an exemplary manner."

"A judiciary that must be protected from any attempt to delegitimise it, in order to maintain its prerogative as an institution committed to restoring legality."

"Twenty-five years after the Mani Pulite investigations, Italy remains a country with a very high level of corruption. Of the politicians and businesspeople involved in the scandal, only those who have left the scene for reasons of age have gone."

"Since 1992, a false narrative of that period has taken hold. All sorts of things have been said: that there was excessive use of preventive detention, that they were tortured to make them talk, that it was a political operation to bring down the First Republic, or even a major CIA conspiracy. This prevents us from coming to terms with that system of corruption. The hope for clean politics that existed 25 years ago is weaker today than it was then."

"It was a missed opportunity for politics, which failed to seize the chance to truly renew the rules of the game and the people who play it."

"The party system has apparently collapsed because there has only been a superficial change, which has recycled too many of the protagonists in the so-called Second Republic. Above all, the methods and styles of work have not changed."

"Mani Pulite still provokes both hatred and love today, dividing detractors from supporters. This is a sign that what it exposed – corruption, the relationship between politics and business, the clashes between politics and the judiciary – is still a burning issue."

"Tangentopoli is a system of party financing, but at the same time it is: for businesses, a system of cartel agreements that eliminates the market and free competition, inflating the costs of public works; for parties, a system of consensus building that uses public money without regard for the usefulness of the works carried out, the efficiency of the services provided, or compatibility with the state's accounts."

"It was a major but ordinary judicial investigation, Mani Pulite, not a political operation."

"The economic crisis, which had reduced the amount of public money available for contracts and therefore the margins for bribes, made entrepreneurs more willing to report politicians who asked them for bribes in exchange for increasingly less lucrative benefits."

"It was not the judges in the trials, but the voters at the ballot box, who brought down the party system of the First Republic, now discredited, and forced the ruling class itself to change, at least in appearance, the political landscape."

"Investigations reconstructed a system in which the governing parties participated directly in the distribution of bribes, while the Pci-Pds was financed through a share of public contracts awarded to red cooperatives, which then financed the party, mostly legally."

"Craxi proved to be the only party secretary who also stole for himself and without any precautions."

"Di Pietro has been investigated extensively, dozens of times, without a single piece of evidence of criminal activity being found against him."

"When the wind changed, Di Pietro became an illiterate, scruffy and unscrupulous peasant. These details in no way detract from his commendable work as a magistrate, nor do they reduce by one cent the guilt of those investigated and convicted by Di Pietro."

"(About Bettino Craxi) He had transformed the PSI into an organisation in which the political power of local and national leaders was measured by their ability to collect illegal funds and bribes."

"Mr Di Pietro, I am writing to you not only to wish you well in your work investigating bribery and corruption, especially now that some people would like to erase and cover up everything. I am also writing to bring to your attention, as well as to your listeners, an investigation that appears today in Corriere della Sera, which could be entitled: Where are they now? The protagonists are all people who passed through your office at the time, Dr Di Pietro: namely, those investigated, suspected and accused in the Mani Pulite investigation."

"Leonardo Sciascia wrote: “Perhaps the whole of Italy is becoming Sicily”. I think of Tangentopoli, and Captain Bellodi, the protagonist of Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl), who reflects on what should be done to defeat the Mafia: “We should suddenly swoop down on the banks: put expert hands on the accounts, generally double-entry, of large and small companies, and review the land registers”. How intelligent Leonardo Sciascia was, and how he knew how to read the news and even predict it."

"In the face of a dangerous erosion of the general will, the collapse of civic conscience and the loss of a sense of justice, the last, extreme bastion of morality, it is the duty of the community to resist, resist, resist, as if on an unyielding line of the Piave."

"At that time, the connection between business and politics, however murky it may have been, did not contradict the fundamental objective of the business world, which is to produce wealth."

"No one could delude themselves that five, or even ten years of fighting corruption would change the spirit of the average Italian, their distrust of rules and institutions. The customs of this country are, unfortunately, immovable."

"When those who had been praising us began to realise that the restoration of legality did not stop at Montedison or Palazzo Chigi, but extended to everyday life, they began to show signs of annoyance and weariness."

"I have always noticed that the only figure defined by the Gospel as “unjust” is that of a judge: and it seemed to me an apt definition. Fascism was less hateful than this robed bureaucracy that used violence in the name of justice. In the history of Italy, if freedom had prevailed, as I now believe to be certain, the names of the magistrates of Milan, Di Pietro, Borrelli, Davigo and Boccassini would have been forever signati nigro lapillo (marked with a black stone) as figures to be remembered with horror, those of the unjust judge."

"Mani Pulite began as a simple police operation in a case of extortion. Thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and the intelligence and determination of Judge Di Pietro, it developed to the point of involving an entire political class. The mechanism that had protected the system of corruption until then had two pillars. The first was the belief that everyone did it and that therefore the laws had essentially fallen into disuse and only fools still felt bound by them. The second was the certainty that if, by chance, someone fell into the clutches of the law, powerful friends would protect them or, at least, compensate them. Di Pietro and his colleagues succeeded in subverting these two pillars."

"Silvio Berlusconi's comparison with the Uno Bianca gang to express his personal opinion of the judiciary is an unfortunate one. Regardless of the fact that Silvio Berlusconi is currently on trial for corruption at the Court of Milan, Berlusconi would do well to reflect on the fact that the “accomplices” of this “deviant body” of the state also include the hundreds of thousands of Milanese who in recent years have morally supported the activities of the Mani Pulite magistrates against the attacks of the Rome regime, to which Berlusconi was also sentimentally attached, given that Craxi was his best man at his wedding. Does he want to compare the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office to the Uno Bianca gang? It is an outrage that a self-styled candidate for the leadership of the country should have such contempt for the victims of the criminal gang, including some young carabinieri, that he compares his legal troubles and those of his “friends” to the blood shed by those whose only fault was to stop brutal murderers. These arguments are not part of an election campaign. They are an insult to all citizens."

"The First Republic was not killed by the judges of Mani Pulite. It had already died long before, when it closed itself off in a blind defence of its own political class. In the stormy climate of these days, an absolute and corporative defence of everything and everyone will sooner or later put us in an untenable situation with regard to public opinion."

"First the Pci and then the Pds never participated in the system of dividing up government posts among the parties. But this is no longer enough to explain what is happening. Perhaps we have not been able to completely escape the consociational pact. Collective political responsibility lies with all the leaders of those years."

"A perverse intertwining of economics and politics is emerging, which puts democracy itself at risk. Faced with this danger, our political diversity cannot simply be proclaimed, but must be practised and demonstrated in our behaviour."

"In the last couple of years, even though I received money, I no longer paid any of it to other politicians, as I had acquired an authoritative and independent position within the Milanese PSI that allowed me to answer to no one but, politically, directly to the national secretary of the party, Bettino Craxi."

"Public consensus was an essential factor in the success of the Mani Pulite operation."

"Looking back on Mani Pulite, it is clear, at least to me, that if you want to achieve a result, you cannot delegate the task to others. Instead, in Italy, it was, and still is, in my opinion, as if the other powers had said to the judiciary, “You take care of it”, instead of committing themselves directly to the common good."

"[In 1993] We cannot and must not emerge from Tangentopoli with a clean slate, public lynching or exasperated intransigence."

"Craxi and Martinazzoli should have acknowledged that the DC and the PSI were the founding members of Tangentopoli."

"Here, everyone finances everyone else. So as not to upset anyone. Typical of Italy."

"(About an analogy between the Mani Pulite period and the 2006 World Cup] After families were destroyed by Mani Pulite without any contribution to the moralisation of the country, now, with the same actors, we will have no moralisation thanks to Calciopoli: either the clubs give it to themselves or it will certainly not be Borrelli who gives it to them. And we run the risk of having another series of suicides, attempted suicides and destroyed families. The boys of the national team are withstanding this psychological persecution and have also withstood the pain of the Pessotto affair. For this I say well done to them."

"The magistrates of Mani Pulite have and will have my support. (5 April 1992)"

"In 1993, there was a pointless revolution in Italy, or rather a coup d'état.... Unfortunately, the Christian Democrats did not understand or underestimated the situation, busy as they were passing judgement on my alleged mental state....Today, I would say that Di Pietro could be a good mobile squad leader, one of those who are forgiven for certain excesses....As for morality, if at his age, when I was Undersecretary of Defence, I had accepted money from friends... what would have happened to me? (January 2003)"

"They have created a terrible atmosphere."

"(About the arrest of Mario Chiesa) In this affair, unfortunately, I am one of the victims. I am concerned with creating the conditions for the country to have a government that can tackle the difficult years ahead, and I find myself with a crook who casts a shadow over the entire image of a party that, in Milan, in fifty years, in the administration of the City of Milan, in the administration of city institutions – not in five years, in fifty – has never had an administrator convicted of serious crimes committed against the public administration."

"The judiciary must get to the bottom of this throughout Italy. Then it will be clear that Milan is the cleanest city in Italy."

"Mario Chiesa is a scoundrel. And an idiot, too, for getting caught red-handed. (17 February 1992)"

"Don't think that every month there can be a Chiesa scandal. (19 April 1992)"

"[About the investigation pool] It is an irrefutable fact that they have a propensity to include deprivation of personal liberty among their investigative tools."

"I have observed that if there was little virtue in what is now dismissed as the “old system”, there is just as little in what is now extolled as the “new system”. It is not at all virtuous to feign surprise at the excesses of financial interventionism in the world of private or public production."

"Nor is it particularly virtuous to suddenly discover that the “politics of the powerful” has always had its price and has always been the subject of negotiations and deals, often bad deals. At the time, it was necessary to criticise that policy itself and not so much those deals. Otherwise, only the type of deals will change, but not the policy."

"A system of legality is necessary. If guarantees are not in vogue, let us reflect on the fact that once the well is empty, we all risk dying of thirst before it rains again."

"There is no doubt that there have been exaggerations. But the collapse of the Christian Democrats and the PSI was a political affair, not a judicial one. Healthy parties would not have been overwhelmed."

"When the law, due to obvious disparities in treatment, conflicts with feelings of justice and fairness, it becomes very difficult to do one's duty without feeling like an instrument of injustice. We have therefore informed the public prosecutor of our determination to request, as soon as possible, assignment to another and different position, in which there is no stark contrast between what our conscience dictates and what the law imposes."