Piero Grasso awarded for the fight against Mafia

Piero Grasso, National anti-Mafia prosecutor, has been awarded yesterday evening (Wednesday) the Falcone and Borsellino prize organised since 1993 by the University Cattaneo in Castellanza and this year inserted in the Chiara Prize.The prize-giving took place in the provincial base at Villa Recalcati in the presence of the prefect, police commissioner and the commander of the Carabinieri and in addition different provincial representatives and regional politicians. The prize, which is dedicated to the two magistrates who attacked the Mafia, for the first time in Italy with extreme firmness,    then they became victims and martyrs in the two attacks in Capaci and Palermo, with also their escorts. On the wave of that big indignation and emotion it was born the idea of the prize that last year was given to the interior minister, Roberto Maroni.

The 2011 edition has been given to a magistrate who has always been at the front line in the fight aginst Cosa Nostra with the important role of director of the Public Prosecution’s office in Palermo between 2000 and 2004 and who has arrested 13 of the 30 most dangerous fugitives including Bernardo Provenzano. He has done it in a province which has recently discovered to not be exempt from the infiltrations of the ‘Ndrangheta and Mafia criminal organisations . After receiving the prize from the professor Alfredo Bassion, president of the prize,Piero Grasso wanted to point out in his speech the internationalisation ability of the mafias and of their capacity to operate with extreme certainty on the National and global stages of the economy: “It is also thanks to the legal systems which argue for a bit of supremacy and they do not harmonise their rules at international level“, said Grasso during his statement, “that a third of global treasures is hiding in tax havens.“

Grasso hasn’t forgotten young people and he has dedicated to them the most beautiful message: “What you have is the naivety, my teacher always told me, meaning that you are free from the cynicism of elderly people because you hope that your dreams and your utopias become true. It is this that improves the world.” At the end the appeal to the northern administrations which sometimes don’t have the real perception about the easiness to find turbid interests also at these latitude which encourage the clan near the town hall: “Here you have to learn to understand who is in front of you and who is behind you“said the prosecutor about the reasons for the sentence  in the Bad Boys trial that have mentioned the hypothesis of a collusion between local politics and ‘Ndrangheta.