Thursday

HANDS OVER THE CITY

Yesterday the officers of the DIA, or Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate, under the command of Colonel Gabriele Tosti and the forces of the ROS, or Special Operations Group, carried out a roundup, arresting the members of a Mafia-connected profiteering ring that had taken control of numerous local public works contracts and had operated in the shadows, using as fronts a series of Italian-Swiss shell companies. A startling number of prominent local names were involved: Luca Grange and his brother-in-law Daniele Barba, chairman and managing director of Architettura Futura respectively; Dr. Berardo Turrini, head physician at the Aosta hospital, and his wife, Laura, former director of the Vallée Savings Bank; Walter Cremonesi, now a vintner, but also a former terrorist with ties to the Milanese underworld; and last of all, Carlo Cutrì, ostensibly Dr. Turrini’s stable boy but actually a member of the Calabrian ’ndrina of the Mileto clan, tied to the kidnapping of Chiara Berguet, daughter of the well-known local businessman and builder Pietro Berguet, a kidnapping that in not even two weeks was resolved successfully due to the efforts of the officers at Aosta police headquarters. At the center of the investigation is the assignment of public works contracts for construction on the hospital and the regional medical clinics. Architettura Futura had won those contracts, scooping them out from under the nose of Pietro Berguet’s Edil.ber.

It’s a fine, memorable day for our city, but this cancer that had metastasized in the good and honest part of our society and which has been extracted by the painstaking and heroic work of Judge Baldi of the Aosta prosecutor’s office ought to be a warning to the . . .

Rocco turned the page. He ought to have gone to sleep, to catch up on the hours of backlog; instead, by six in the morning, he was already on his feet and sitting down at the bar. Ettore’s espresso hadn’t helped him to regain consciousness, and reading the newspaper was even more boring than a dance recital.

COULD THE CUNTRERA MURDER BE RELATED TO HIGH-LEVEL ARRESTS?