Claudius Scajola, Minister of Economic Development in the last Berlusconi government, he has been arrested this morning at dawn in a hotel in Rome from the Dia of Reggio Calabria. The accusation is that he has favored the inaction of the businessman from Reggio and former parliamentarian Amedeo Matacena, definitively convicted of external competition in a mafia association.
In all, the magistrate issued restrictive measures against eight people, including Matacena himself, Chiara Rizzo and Raffaella De Carolis, respectively wife and mother of the fugitive. Also arrested were Martino Politi, Antonio Chillemi and Roberta Sacco, Scajola's secretary.
The subjects involved are "gravely suspected in various capacities of having, through their interposition, facilitated the entrepreneur Matacena to conceal the real ownership and availability of his assets, as well as of having favored the latter's abscond abroad".
Searches are underway in Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Lazio, Calabria and Sicily, as well as seizures of Italian commercial companies, connected to foreign companies, for a value of around 50 million euros.
The operations are part of the investigation called "Breakfast", which for more than two years has seen the Dia of Reggio Calabria engaged in the search for reinvestments of illicit capital by the 'Ndrangheta in Italy and abroad.
"I don't know for what reasons" Scajola was arrested, "I am sorry and I am saddened by it", but "I know nothing of this situation", commented Silvio Berlusconi on the microphones of Radio Capital.
To those who asked him if there was a link between the investigation and Scajola's exclusion from the Forza Italia lists for the European elections, the former Knight replied “absolutely not. He was not nominated because following a poll we found that his candidacy would lead to a decrease in the overall vote of our supporters ”.
