Francesco 'Sandokan' Schiavone repents: former head of the Casalesi clan
Luca Grossi March 29, 2024
His collaboration could reveal other links between the Camorra, Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta
The start of the collaboration process by Francesco Schiavone , nicknamed 'Sandokan', was confirmed by the National Anti-Mafia Directorate. According to what we understand, the decision was made in recent weeks, during which the DNA and the DDA of Naples, led by the Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri , carried out their work with the utmost discretion.

Schiavone was one of the last diehards of the Casalese Camorra, custodian of important secrets, after 26 years in prison, most spent under the hard prison regime.

In the 1980s, he had become the absolute leader of one of the most economically and militarily powerful criminal organizations in Campania, with interests branched out in many regions, the Casalesi clan, whose genesis began in the early 1970s, when the young Antonio Bardellino , from San Cipriano di Aversa, was affiliated to Cosa Nostra by the group dominant in Sicily at the time headed by Stefano Bontade . Also with him was his lieutenant Mario Iovine .

The Camorra family, we remember, had built a series of power relations also in Calabria with the 'Ndrangheta, as reported by many of the Dia's half-yearly reports. On these 'nodes' the newly repentant could reveal important truths.

'Sandokan''s career began as the driver of the boss Umberto Ammaturo and with an arrest in 1972 when he was just 18 years old, for possession and possession of a firearm, but soon he was one of the protagonists of the Camorra war in the Caserta area, first becoming an affiliate to the group of Antonio Bardellino and Mario Iovine , leader in the Nuova Famiglia fighting with Raffaele Cutolo 's organized Nuova Camorra , and then the leader of the internal feud that leveraged Iovine (whose brother Domenico had been killed on Bardellino's orders) to eliminate the clan leader in Brazil in 1988, immediately taking control of the Casalesi.

That was also the moment of the turning point in the affairs of the clan which chose to also focus on the toxic waste trafficking which poisoned part of the Caserta lands.

Furthermore, with Schiavone, the clan's infiltration into various sectors of the legal economy and politics began. In July 1998 the arrest; since then he has been imprisoned under the 41 bis regime. Two of his sons, Nicola and Walter, also started the same path now undertaken by their father a few years ago.

His revelations could help investigators not only to reconstruct a piece of the history of the Camorra, identifying instigators and perpetrators of murders and ambushes, but also to understand the current structures of the Casalesi. Schiavone had several convictions, including for murder, the most famous of which was life imprisonment at the end of the famous Spartacus trial.

"The news of the repentance of the Casalesi boss Francesco Schiavone is a positive signal in the fight against organized crime, not only in Caserta, but throughout the country. The Casalesi clan, it should be remembered, has had clear political and business ties in several territories. A metastasis which, thanks to the work of the police, has been arrested. My hope is that this repentance will be useful in shedding light on those connections, as well as on the many crimes of which the Casalesi clan is responsible has been stained over the years. The instrument of repentance, when real, is a very important fact, especially for judicial purposes and for combating the Camorra, because it is thanks to those who repent that we can discover facts that otherwise would never have come to light" said the contact person for Libera Campania, Mariano Di Palma .

There is no doubt that Schiavone's choice to repent has a high symbolic value for the message of surrender that it transmits to the young recruits of the clan, profoundly disjointed by the harsh blows inflicted in recent years by the DDA of Naples.

For now the diehards remain the other historic Casalesi leader Francesco Bidognetti , known as "Cicciotto e Mezzanotte", in prison since 1993, and Michele Zagaria , captured on 7 December 2011 after sixteen years on the run.