Antimafia Commission - The Fourth Commission

The Fourth Commission

The fourth Commission was installed on June 8, 1992, after the murder of judge Giovanni Falcone on May 23 and was modified after the killing of his colleague Paolo Borsellino on July 19. On September 23, Luciano Violante from the Democratic Party of the Left (Partito democratico della Sinistra, PDS) was appointed president of the Commission. Under Violante’s leadership the Commission worked for 17 months until the dissolution of Parliament in February 1994. It passed 13 reports, but its most important one was on the relations between the Mafia and politics, the so-called terzo livello (third level) of the Mafia, on April 6, 1993.

The Commission had to work in one of Italy’s most critical moment when the country’s democracy was challenged by criminal subversion by the Mafia and the Mani pulite investigation that unravelled Tangentopoli (Italian for bribeville), the corruption-based political system that dominated Italy. Despite the political sensitive nature of the Commission’s work, Violante’s greatest achievement was that the most important reports were backed by all major parties instead, as in the past, of producing majority (government) and minority (opposition) reports on the same theme.

Important pentiti like Tommaso Buscetta, Antonio Calderone, Leonardo Messina and Gaspare Mutolo gave testimonies. It found that Salvo Lima, a former Christian Democrat mayor of Palermo who was murdered in March 1992, had been linked to the Mafia and that former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti had been Lima's "political contact" in Rome. On November 16, 1992 Tommaso Buscetta testified before the Antimafia Commission. "Salvo Lima was, in fact, the politician to whom Cosa Nostra turned most often to resolve problems for the organisation whose solution lay in Rome," Buscetta said. Other collaborating witnesses confirmed that Lima had been specifically ordered to "fix" the appeal of the Maxi Trial with Italy's Supreme Court and had been murdered because he failed to do so.

Gaspare Mutolo warned the Commission in February 1993 of the likelihood that further attacks were being planned by the Corleonesi on the mainland.

The Senate authorized to proceed with the criminal investigation of Giulio Andreotti on June 10, 1993 (he was formally committed for trial in Palermo on March 2, 1995).