On February 17, 1992, with the arrest in Milan of Mario Chiesa
, socialist president of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, the investigation began which would go down in history as
Mani Pulite.
Coordinated by the Public Prosecutor led by
Francesco Saverio Borrelli
and by the adjunct
Gerardo D'Ambrosio
and assigned in the first instance to the prosecutors
Antonio Di Pietro, Piercamillo Davigo and Gherardo Colombo
, the investigation turned the whole country upside down and redesigned the Italian political geography, sweeping via PSI and DC but not sparing other parties either.
After the Milanese one, about seventy prosecutors throughout Italy started investigations on corruption in the public administration.
No one was spared: political leaders, ministers and managers but also large groups such as Fiat, Eni, Montedison, Enel, Olivetti and also the Fininvest group.
That season in which the hopes of a regenerated society and the sense of justicialism were mixed, in which the spectacle trials and a tug-of-war between politics and the judiciary were staged,
canceled the First Republic but, it is the opinion of many , not the underworld
.
That period is now a chapter written in the history books.
On the other hand, a series of questions remain open and the controversies never subsided over the role of robes accused of undue invasion of the field and of a distorted use of the power conferred on them.
The protagonists of that time either disappeared or in principle have changed their lives.
Di Pietro, 71, perhaps the most popular face of the Mani Pulite pool, hung his magistrate's toga in 1994 to then wear it again over 20 later, but as a lawyer, after going through legal troubles from which he emerged unscathed. and having trodden the political scene and having also become a minister.
Gherardo Colombo, now 75, also left the judiciary in 2007. However, he has dedicated himself to an assiduous activity of preventing corruption in schools and educating on legality.
Among his various positions, he is president of Garzanti Libri and of ResQ People Saving People, an NGO he founded and from 2012 to 2015 he was on the Board of Directors of Rai.
Davigo, on the other hand, last year, when he turned 70, retired, despite his 'battle' to keep his place at the CSM, his latest appointment,
after having been in the Supreme Court, at the helm of the Anm and before that in the Court of Appeal.
For a certain period he was a columnist at the Fatto Quotidiano and one of the regular guests in some TV broadcasts.
He is currently accused in Brescia for revelation of official secrecy in the case of the reports of Piero Amara.
Mario Chiesa, on the other hand, after having served his sentence for the Pio Albergo Trivulzio affair, came back, albeit indirectly, to politics by joining the Compagnia delle Opere, the entrepreneurial association of Communion Liberation.
But in March 2009 he was again arrested for irregularities in the management of waste in Lombardy, an incident for which he then negotiated three and a half years in Busto Arsizio (Varese).
Not very different is the parable of Gianstefano Frigerio, at the time Lombard secretary of the Christian Democrats then recycled into Forza Italia, and of Primo Greganti, 'comrade G', an official of the PCI-PDS until he dedicated himself to private affairs: they are were rearrested in 2015 in the Milanese investigation into the so-called 'Expo procurement dome'.
L'
former minister Francesco De Lorenzo became president of the European Coalition of Cancer Patients, while his fellow countryman Paolo Cirino Pomicino never gave up politics even if he moved away from the DC and in 2019 he converted, approaching the Democratic Party.
A new life between Monte Carlo and South America is that of Carlo Sama, accused in the Enimont trial, entrepreneur and manager, married to Alessandra Ferruzzi, daughter of Serafino Ferruzzi, and brother-in-law of Raul Gardini.
As president of Agropeco, he works in the agricultural and livestock sector.
In 2016 he was appointed honorary consul of Paraguay in the Monegasque principality.
Finally Segio Cusani, the only one, it is known, that he really paid.
After serving his sentence of 5 years and 10 months, four of which in prison, he made a clean break with his life as a manager.