A former anti-mafia champion, Antonello Montante, was sentenced to 14 years in jail on Friday for a string of offences including corruption, according to Italian media reports.
Montante, who has always denied the charges against him, was the national spokesman on legal issues for Italy’s employers’ organization, Confindustria, as well as the head of its Sicilian branch.
POLITICO reports that a probe was launched in 2015 after a string of mafia turncoats told prosecutors that, despite his attacks on organized crime, Montante was actually involved with Sicilian mob bosses — in particular Vincenzo Arnone and his father Paolino, who were best men at Montante’s wedding in December 1980.
Prosecutors said they found a haul of documents in January 2016 in a room in Montante’s villa at Serradifalco, near Caltanissetta in central Sicily. There were dossiers on politicians, prosecutors, investigators and others full of details collected by his informants. The suspicion is that the dossiers were to be used for blackmail, wrote the daily La Stampa.
The sentence “shows the gravity of the so-called Montante system,” said Nicola Morra, chairman of the Italian parliament’s anti-mafia commission. However, Montante’s lawyer Panepinto said his client had been set up by the mafia.
Via POLITICO / La Repubblica / La Stampa
