Extortion e blackmail to society, punitive expeditions against rivals, blows to inconvenient journalists. Intimidation e attacks to the players, frightened by raids on the changing rooms, or sought after in the city’s clubs and restaurants and scolded for going out at night. In parallel to the pressure exerted by this group of ultratheirs grew hidden economic interests in the management of gadgets, parties, tickets and even the safety of the team itself, all managed through a network of frontmen. Over the years, according to the Genoa Prosecutor’s Office, the organized support of the Genoa was captured and monopolized by an extreme fringe, which brought with it the shadow of relations with the organized crime and made a turn towards the extreme right. A “criminal association” which, for prosecutors Francesca Rombolà and Giancarlo Vona, is acriminal association and must be punished with a total of 33 years in prison for 14 of the 15 defendants.
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At the top of this organization, according to the public prosecution, there was Massimo Leopizzi, charismatic leader of the former “Speloncia Brigade”, with a criminal record for attempted extortion, injuries, carrying and illegal possession of weapons linked to a shooting. An old story, the latter, linked according to the investigators to debt collection in the drug sector on behalf of another of the defendants, Fabrizio Fileni, called Tombolone. For Leopizzi the prosecutors asked for eight years in prison, for Fileni three and a half years; asked for two years and four months against Piermarco Pellizzari, nicknamed Cobra, former leader of the club via Armenia 5rand 1 year and 4 months for “Davidino” Masala, already sentenced to years in prison for drug trafficking.
Leopizzi, hit over time by various Daspo, managed restaurants and bakeries through wooden heads. Above all, he was a hidden partner of the Sicurart, a security company that for a certain period provided stewards to Genoa. The company had a “clean” name, that of Artur Marashi, an Albanian who in other investigations emerged among the contacts of the Serbian drug trafficker Safet Altic and people close to the ‘Ndrangheta. Marashi, the only one in this story who wasn’t a fan, was a sort of hinge between the team and the organized supporters: on the one hand he reassured the players and accredited himself as a guarantor of their safety; on the other hand, the prosecutors accuse him, he was a participant in the hidden interests by Leopizzi. Sicurart, ultimately, would have been a sort of screen to hide the proceeds of extortion: Leopizzi and his loyalists were able to direct the protests, put pressure on the team, decree whether a player was worthy or not of wearing the shirtwhether a coach could stay or go.
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It was the company that suffered the blackmail, which, however, according to the investigators, plays a role that is to say the least ambiguous in this affair. The former CEO Alessandro Zarbanoheard as a witness, risks being investigated for false testimony: the Prosecutor’s Office believes that his memories are too lenient against the defendants suspected of a long series of extortions. Among the many symptomatic episodes of the climate, according to the prosecutors, there is a request for 200 thousand euros presented by the fans to the club: a debt linked to alleged bets that would have concerned the player Omar Milanetto; the debt would have belonged to the player, but the ultras went to raise cash from the club managers. Zarbano was the historic trusted man of Enrico Preziosito which Leopizzi boasted of being linked by “a blood pact”: during the trial, an artisanal audio was produced of a conversation between the fans and the former rossoblù patron, from which the ultras were convinced that the admissions of Preziosi regarding alleged football match-fixing.
At a certain point something breaks in the relationship between the club and that section of the fans. On January 17, 2016, then-coach Gian Piero Gasperini makes an unprecedented gesture for Italian football: after the protests following Genoa-Palermo, in the post-match press conference he attacks head-on the ultra leaders of the North steps, indicating them by name, “a particularly significant and demonstrative interview of the condition of the ‘then coach of Genoa”. Gasperini, contested by the fans, will be forced to leave. As well as some players, like Dario Dainelli, who, Preziosi admits today, “was afraid”. The prosecutors’ thesis is that somehow the relationships were then mended and the extortion continued.
In 2017, the Genoa fans were the subject of attention from the Anti-Mafia Commission, which spoke of “intimidating power that conditions society”, of methods “that imitate those of the mafia” and “ambiguous relationships, often of connivance and at the same time of subjugation” between the steps and the management. Leopizzi’s name had already emerged in another investigation by the flying squad, Operation Wiseguy, which traced a sort of criminal novel in Ligurian style, which connected old criminals such as Marietto Rossi, historic leader of the “gang of lifers” and figures close to the Saetta family, believed to be close to the Camorra. From the interceptions, Rossi’s men speak of the “ultra” as a person who would have put himselfavailable”. The position of Leopizzi, also investigated here with Marashi, was archived in this case.
The defendants (defended among others by lawyers Stefano Sambugaro, Riccardo La Monaca, Andrea Vernazza, Enrico Grillo and Giuseppe Sciacchitano) deny all charges: that of the ultras was only organized support, not a criminal association. A few months ago a huge fight took place within the Genoa fans itself, between members of the former Speloncia Brigade and others of the via Armenia 5r group. According to the police it would be one redefinition of the power relations. One of the motives could be political, given that the first formation is linked to twinned far-right fans, while the other would have a more neutral vision.
2024-04-16 19:46:00
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