Roberto Saviano - ZeroZeroZero

In early December 2010, the DDA of Catanzaro launched Operation Overloading, which would have brought to an end a drug-trafficking investigation like so many others were it not for the fact that it happened to involve some anomalous figures: a Carabinieri colonel in service in Bolzano and a young, very wealthy real estate agent in Rome who is called Pupone, or Big Baby, like Totti, in the wiretappings. The first was involved in picking up some suitcases at Fiumicino Airport and then delivering them to their addressees in Rome. The second, of helping to finance loads of cocaine, thanks to his friendship with Antonio Pelle, nephew of the recently deceased boss ’Ntoni Gambazza.

The first customers for that round of imports were two allied ’ndrine on the Tyrrhenian side of the province of Cosenza — minor families, despite how formidable they were. Their initial objective was to supply their own zones and still have enough of a surplus to sell in the north. But they wanted to do things right. So they hired Bruno Pizzata, the best narco in San Luca. Pizzata, a real pro, insisted that for the moment it was too slow, too complicated, and too inefficient to send the lots by ship. So he decided on air delivery from Venezuela and Brazil to Amsterdam, Rome, or Spain, making use of “mules” who swallow drug-filled pellets or carry false-bottomed suitcases. Pizzata was constantly traveling between South America, Spain, Holland, and Germany. He’d spent a good part of his life in Germany, and that was where he took refuge after having escaped arrest during Overloading; until February 2011, when they found him eating in the pizzeria La Cucina in Oberhausen, a city very close to Duisburg, the 2007 site of the ’ndrangheta massacre.

Pizzata was too busy, his life too complicated, for him to take care of everything. So he delegated the bulk of the coordination in Italy to Francesco Strangio. Then he found out that the Bellocco family of Rosarno were allegedly about to meet with a Colombian agent in Italy who could get his hands on enormous quantities of “material,” as cocaine is called over the phone. So toward the end of 2008 the two groups decided to form a business alliance. The man who provided that precious contact for the San Luca and Rosarno families was none other than Bruno Fuduli.

Bruno was arrested for drug trafficking and condemned to eighteen years of imprisonment on May 16, 2012. How was that possible? How was it possible that the leaf destined to rot on the ground found its way back onto the branches of the tree? How was it possible that in late October 2008, he declared on a TV program that they would track him down and kill him, and then, not long after, he got in contact with his old Colombian acquaintances and ’ndrangheta clients again? Despite Bruno’s previous collaboration, the judges did not grant him a sentence reduction.

To try and understand it I consulted the court records. They reconstruct the facts, the dates, and the evidence; they trace in great detail the events as they unfold, but they can’t reveal a person’s soul — even less that of a person so apt at hiding his intentions without even lying. The records say that Bruno managed again to make fun of the state. He met with the narcos’ middleman, even put him up in his home in Calabria, accompanied him to near where his appointments with Pizzata or Francesco Strangio were, almost always near the Central Station in Milan. When he was placed under police protection they made him live in Fiorenzuola d’Arda near Piacenza, not far away from Milan. But the San Luca and Rosarno men never saw him. He became a director and secret organizer. He evaluated costs and routes, came up with transportation systems, ironed out problems, calmed people down. All he needed was one person willing to act as an interface with the buyers. Probably an old acquaintance in this case as well: Joseph Bruzzese, a marble cutter by trade but whose résumé qualifies him for the Calabrian families. He was the one who proposed the new route to a Bellocco lieutenant. So the mechanism Fuduli thought up was set in motion.

No one, other than a few Calabrian newspapers, even noticed the incredible evolution of Bruno Fuduli’s story. They talk about a “return to his old love, crime,” and “to his first passion, cocaine.” They’re loaded with quotation marks for words like “infiltrator,” “songbird,” “deep throat,” “rat.” They all use the same vocabulary, full of ambiguous ironies, and they ooze contentment because the “supercollaborator is still in jail. In solitary confinement.” They even feign indignation at the infidelity of a man who had turned himself in, so as to water down the real reason for the scandal: The infiltrator had succeeded in insinuating himself with the upper echelon of the ’ndrangheta. Yet these are the same papers that had dedicated a lot of attention to another episode, the only documentable one in the period of Fuduli’s life between the end of the trial and the beginning of his return to drug trafficking.

The morning of May 21, 2007, an antimafia demonstration marched through the center of Vibo Valentia. That day was chosen because it coincided with the opening of the new eyewear store of Nello Ruello, the shopkeeper who, after enduring ten years of extortion and usury, decided to report his oppressors and turned government witness. Onstage, along with the other authorities, were the mayor and the prefect, an undersecretary of the interior, the president of the Antimafia Commission, Francesco Forgione, and Don Luigi Ciotti, the founder of Libera, an association on the front line in the battle against the mafia. Before them were gathered a hundred or so students, union and antimafia association militants, a few townspeople, and even fewer shopkeepers. A typical demonstration in mafia territories, unfortunately. Yet during the closing rally a small incident occurred. A man climbed onto the barriers enclosing Piazza Municipio and started shouting. “Where’s my money? Where’s my 5,000 kilos of cocaine?” The local papers took photos, and they printed the image of Bruno shouting and raising his left arm defiantly while being restrained by the police. He was wearing a new, light-colored linen suit, this time with a jacket, only his eyes are hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. Later on he was interviewed.

Fuduli said that he’d applied for the financial assistance provided to victims of rackets and usury, which he needed to start a new enterprise, two years before, but he still hadn’t seen a cent. He explained that he came to Vibo Valentia with his mother and brother because he’d decided to leave the protection program. One interview in particular is chilling, starting with the title: “Don’t collaborate with the law, they’ll screw you.” It opens with a statement Fuduli made: “Thanks to me, 140 people went to jail, I uncovered five tons of cocaine and the trafficking between Calabria and Colombia, but now I told them all to go to hell….”

The rest of what he says is just as unequivocal. The state ruined his life, Fuduli claims. It gives him less than €1,000 a month. He’s starving, he’s being evicted from his apartment, he has a sister who suffers seriously from stress, an elderly mother. He’s so desperate he decided to expose himself right in the center of Vibo Valentia. When asked if he ever thought about going to the other side, he replies: “Yes, I’ve thought about it, and I regret not having done it, given what my collaboration with the law has brought me.” In the space of ten days he is granted the economic assistance he’d requested as well as a mortgage to start a new commercial enterprise. But perhaps it’s already too late. The former double agent had announced in no uncertain terms his intention to betray the state. Bruno Fuduli never lacked determination or courage. It’s only fair that he pay for his choice.