Did Borrelli aspire to the Quirinale as Formica says? I don’t think so, that’s why
What doesn't add up in the interview of former minister Rino Formica with Corriere della sera on the alleged presidential aims of the then head of the Milan prosecutor's office, Francesco Saverio Borrelli. Damato's point published in the newspaper Libero
In a long interview with the almost centenarian Rino Formica collected for the Corriere della Sera by Aldo Cazzullo – coinciding with the 32 years that have passed since 17 February 1992, when Tangentopoli exploded with the arrest of Mario Chiesa while he was getting paid by the suppliers of the cleaning of the Pius Alberto Trivulzio who presided – there is the belief that the then head of the Milan Prosecutor's Office, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, wanted to become head of state. A belief, or sensation, as you prefer, which, having also inspired the title of the interview, could give – I fear – a wrong reading of that whole judicial affair known as " Clean Hands ", which still produces its effects on Italian politics for the lasting imbalance in the relationship between politics and justice.
BORRELLI, FORMICA, THE SERVICES AND MORE
The Impression of the Quirinale in Borelli's ambitions could excite the reader's imagination also in consideration of the "information – Formica tells Cazzullo regarding the "poker of aces" attributed by Formica himself to Craxi on the margins of a party meeting of those times – which the services and the police had provided to Amato, who was Prime Minister" reporting "the telephone traffic of the pool" of magistrates. Some of whom were convinced that they could turn Italy upside down without having to wait for the voters to do so, evidently too uninformed to move in such a revolutionary direction.
“The services – says Formica, now blind but with a very acute direct or indirect memory – have the task of controlling everything that happens around power. Mussolini was also intercepted. The services listened to his conversations with Petacci. Of course, the line between the protection of institutions and intrigue is thin. It depends on the use made of it."
And what had the services discovered? Cazzullo rightly asks, intrigued. “That almost all the magistrates in the pool – replies Fornica – were not saintly. Not just Di Pietro. Each had its external correspondent: political, religious, international. And everyone had their own ambition: some wanted to be Prime Minister, some President of the Republic", like Borrelli who "appears on TV – recalls Formica – and gives orders to Parliament", thus "acting like an aspiring head of the State".
WHAT DOESN'T COME BACK
Of other political or similar outings of Borrelli I remember one in which he warned that, "if called", he or other magistrates could also serve the country without wearing the robe. Which in truth suggested a call more to Palazzo Chigi or its surroundings than to the Quirinale, where to be called it was necessary to wait for the President of the Republic in office to expire or resign and for Parliament to be in joint session, with the reinforcements of visible delegates regional and of the invisible Holy Spirit, if not simultaneously engaged in a Conclave for a new Pope, they would not start voting for an outsider perceived as necessary, and not just as available.
From what I remember of those years, or rather of those times, going back a few months to the arrest of Mario Chiesa, I knew Borelli's aspiration to simply be promoted from head of the Public Prosecutor's Office to head of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Appeal, where the father had already arrived, leaving a good memory that the son evidently wanted to replicate. But when the opportunity came, with the retirement of the legendary Adolfo Beria of Argentina, although timely in submitting the application and discreetly seeking support; despite having already heard once from the competent selection commission of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, where perhaps he had felt some positive attention towards him, Borrelli had some unwelcome surprises.
He learned, for example, that Giulio Catelani's application for participation in the competition for Attorney General of the Ambrosian Court of Appeal had been submitted at the last minute, or out of time, and was preferred to him. And in whose inauguration, given the importance of the judicial district of Milan, the current Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti wanted to personally participate.
A DIFFICULT CLIMATE FOR SOCIALISTS
Borrelli was understandably upset. Even worse when they told him, frankly I don't know if before or after Catelani took office, although he was destined to live an experience that was, to say the least, tormented and ended prematurely in Milan, that it was Bettino Craxi himself who had had a hand in that appointment. displacing the local socialists who were not at all against the promotion of the head of the first instance prosecutor's office.
What happened, in particular, was that on the eve of the decisions of the Superior Council of the Judiciary on the judicial leaders of Milan Andreotti invited the socialist leader to a private conversation. During which he pointed out to him that Borrelli, just over sixty years old, would not only move from the first to the second level of the Public Prosecutor's Office but would remain there for a long time, derogating, under the first and second aspects of the question, from different habits in judicial environment. They would have returned to normal by moving Catelani from Florence to Milan. The speech seemed reasonable to Bettino, who agreed with it.
I never had the opportunity to talk about this passage with Claudio Martelli, who was the Minister of Justice at the time. His intervention would certainly help to clarify. I know, however, that the failure to appoint Francesco Saverio Borrelli to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Appeal on that occasion, which instead occurred on another which remained famous with his triple appeal for "resistance" to a power, a system, call it what you will, in the meantime passed into the hands of Silvio Berlusconi, it contributed at least to creating a very difficult judicial climate in Milan in the 1990s, at least for the socialists. A climate that then spread almost everywhere in Italy.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/borrelli-formica-intervista-corriere/ on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 08:15:33 +0000.