Testimony in Florence

Mafia boss Giuseppe Graviano testified via videolink from Cagliari prison on Friday in the trial of Salvatore Baiardo at the Court of Florence. Answering questions from prosecutors Lorenzo Gestri and Leopoldo De Gregorio, Graviano claimed his maternal grandfather, Filippo Quartararo, entered a joint venture with Silvio Berlusconi in 1969 or 1970. According to Graviano, Quartararo invested between 4 billion and 5 billion lire as part of an overall 20 billion lire real estate investment. Graviano stated that the arrangement guaranteed a 20% return on profits to the investors, which his cousin Salvatore later helped manage.

“My grandfather Filippo Quartararo set up a company with Silvio Berlusconi in 1969-70, to invest his money and other people's money.”

Purported meetings in Milan

Graviano testified that he learned about the financial partnership after the murder of his father, Michele Graviano, on 7 January 1982. Between 1982 and 1983, Quartararo allegedly introduced Graviano to Berlusconi during a meeting at a Milan hotel alongside his cousin Salvatore. Graviano told the court that a private document existed to certify the partnership and list the participating investors. He also recounted subsequent encounters, including a meeting in 1986 while he was a fugitive and another in December 1993 at a residential complex with a swimming pool near Milan. Graviano claimed that the December 1993 meeting aimed to settle financial arrangements and set a February 1994 date to formalize investor names before his arrest.

The Baiardo proceedings

The hearings in Florence form part of the trial against Salvatore Baiardo, who faces charges of aggravated slander and aiding mafia fugitives. Prosecutors allege that Baiardo made false claims concerning television journalist Massimo Giletti and Giancarlo Ricca, the former mayor of Cerasa. The accusations involve an alleged photograph that Baiardo claimed to possess showing Graviano, Berlusconi, and former General Francesco Delfino together. Graviano has been incarcerated for 32 years, serving sentences for the 1992 and 1993 bombings as well as the assassination of priest Pino Puglisi, though he continues to deny involvement and has never formally collaborated with Italian judicial authorities.

Reaction from Marina Berlusconi

Marina Berlusconi, the eldest daughter of Silvio Berlusconi, rejected the claims in a public letter published by Il Giornale. She described the Florence proceedings as an indirect prosecution targeting her late father and former senator Marcello Dell'Utri without affording them the means to mount a direct defence.

“Baiardo, accused of slander, is only a pretext: the real defendants are Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell'Utri, forced into a surreptitious trial that makes a mockery of the rules of the rule of law.”

Marina Berlusconi stated that decades of prior financial investigations into Fininvest found no evidence supporting allegations of mafia capital. She argued that public judicial resources were being squandered on unverified claims from a convicted criminal rather than prioritizing citizen safety.