An encyclopaedia of the Mafia in Lombardy

Let’s start with the questions. Did you know that a ‘bunker courtroom’ was built in Milan to safeguard trials involving the Mafia and the ‘Ndrangheta from possible attacks by major criminal organisations? And that it was in Milan that a massive trial, ‘Countdown’, took place, resulting in one of the highest numbers of life sentences for Mafia offences in Italian history? And furthermore: that Lombardy has been a veritable hunting ground for the Mafia, thanks to complicit – or, to use the term coined by authors such as Rocco Sciarrone (in *Le mafie del Nord*), ‘compatible’ – businesspeople and professionals?

No, we didn’t know that. And there’s a reason for it. This is explained to us in the pages of The Mafia in Milan and Lombardy (published by Zolfo, with an introduction by Nando dalla Chiesa) by the three investigative journalists Mario Portanova, Giampiero Rossi and Franco Stefanoni, authors of a book now in its third edition, but this time with the genuine ambition of becoming a sort of encyclopaedia on the subject, where everything is recounted with the right balance of depth, detail, narrative lightness and the ability to make the subject accessible to a wider audience. Here it is: the reason. Because criminal organisations are a major collective taboo. There is a deeply rooted belief amongst the public – one that has penetrated right into institutional circles – that Milan is different, that crime does not operate there in the same way as it does in Palermo.

The book’s historical overview, brimming with anecdotes and characters, investigations and testimonies, paints a different picture. It recalls the murders of the 1950s (in Varese, that of Ignazio Norrito) and in Como (that of Salvatore Licandro): mafia members eliminated for missteps in the diamond trade, Cosa Nostra’s original business in the North. Then there were the three bullets that struck down Antonino Matranga in 1971, a 66-year-old man from Palermo who had been living in hiding for eight years following an acquittal due to lack of evidence at a trial held in Sicily. The axis between Milan and Palermo began to take shape during that period, orchestrated by a major boss known as Joe Adonis.

In the 1980s, another organised crime group emerged in Lombardy: the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, which was to grow in strength right up to the present day. It established a foothold in Como and Bergamo, then in Lecco and subsequently in Varese, capitalising on the region’s economic strength. At that time, the region was a strategic hub for kidnappings, often with tragic outcomes: in the Varese area, Emanuele Riboli was never released, nor was Tullio De Micheli, whilst Cristina Mazzotti died whilst in captivity.

The escalation of the 1980s, as the three journalists recall, helped to transform the ‘Ndrangheta into the most widespread and powerful criminal organisation in Lombardy, a thousand kilometres from Calabria. All this whilst the nights in Milan were still dominated, during those very same years, by ‘Bel Renè’, Renato Vallanzasca, a criminal who, together with the Milanese underworld, ran the drug trade amongst Milan’s high society, but who was granted the leniency afforded to a legend: for years, newspapers and magazines celebrated the war between gangs as if it were a noir novel, and Bel Renè is remembered not only for his crimes but also for his romantic liaisons.