"THERE'S NO CRIMINAL OFFENSE FROM FACCHETTI."
Narducci, former prosecutor of Calciopoli, speaks: "All guilty so no one is guilty? That is not the case."
Giuseppe Narducci is the chairman of the Rights and Security committee in Naples city council. But he's known as the Calciopoli prosecutor even if he's a magistrate on a leave at the moment and in this capacity he received the "Marzani" award in San Giorgio del Sannio. And finally, following the trail of the title of the debate he was invited to, "Football and power", he talked again about the trial he left immediately after Luigi de Magistris's victory in Naples election. The trial will resume on Tuesday, September 20th.
Mr. Narducci, did you escape from Calciopoli?
"No, my job in the trial was done anyway. The investigation started in September 2004. There's been, even though many seem to forget, an initial judgement, following an abbreviated trial. I broke my personal record thanks to an 18-hour-lasting closing speech. Now Calciopoli is waiting for its judgement. And I chose to offer my services to the city.
Why did you declare "Whether you like it or not, there are no other phone calls from officials to referee designators" when such phone calls really existed?
"That statement has always been misinterpreted. It had a meaning in the context of the trial and I meant to say that no legally relevant phone calls had been inserted in our file. How could we possibly think that in a whole season, with 170,000 tapped phone calls, Bergamo and Pairetto didn't speak to any official from other clubs? That would have been stupid of us."
The Italian Football Federation maintains that they never received the file with those "other phone calls".
"The Italian Federation contacted us one minute after the Calciopoli scandal went public, early June, 2006. They asked us for all the documentation in our possession and we satisfied their request. We handed in the papers we were working on."
So you gave Borrelli and Rossi only the briefings on the investigation?
"We focused on our investigation, on the crime. Afterwards, later, the phone calls became available for all parties."
Experts from Moggi's defense team have recently found, in the blotters, calls marked with red "mustaches" by the Carabinieri, therefore deemed as relevant in a hypothetical work code, and those calls were exactly the second wave of bugged phone calls.
"I'd really love to see those blotters: they're black and white, how could anyone see any colors in them?"
Those phone calls are there, though.
"We're talking about calls from Facchetti and other club officials as if they bear some analogies with what we pointed out about Moggi and the organization under trial. There's been an attempt to spread the notion that everybody was guilty of the same offense, therefore no one was really guilty about it. That's not true! There's been an infuriating campaign claiming: all guilty, no guilty. It's nowhere near the truth."
But there are dozens of calls from Inter officials, and not just them, to referee designators.
"Those calls have no legal relevance. They have nothing to do with the unveiled power organization that held control over Italian football. That was a unique, with no possible example from the past, an association which combined not only men and clubs, above all Luciano Moggi's club, but also some parts of the federal hierarchy. This association had the refs designators in its pocket. There were the Swiss sim cards that we could only partially tap; when we identified someone to bug, suddenly the phone numbers changed. And there were the draws too."
Draws that were notaries and several "drawing journalists" have deemed as immaculate.
"There are testimonies by employees of the Refereeing Committee, Dario Galati and Manfredi Martino. The journalists who took part of the draws were totally unaware of what was happening and had no possibility to check."
Is Calciopoli over?
"The moral issue in football never seems to find solution. From the illegal bets and match-fixing in 1980 and 1986 and minor scandals till now. This year another scandal broke off with the involvement of some of the same people Beatrice and I investigated about in 2004. Among other things, that investigation paved the way to Calciopoli. But Calciopoli was unique. Today we have no element to think there's a similar organization with so much power and control over football. At least, our investigation cleared this much."