Gianluca Barbera tells the first detective story of Tangentopoli in ‘The last night of Raul Gardini’

On 23 July 1993, Raul Gardini, head of a financial empire with ramifications all over the world, a controversial and charismatic character, a great sailor, is found in a lake of blood in his bedroom, in Palazzo Belgioioso, in the heart of Milan. of business. A shot to the temple, fired from close range. Murder or suicide? For some time he had been breathing heavily on the neck of the magistrates, perhaps he was about to be arrested. But many things don’t add up. The first detective story of Tangentopoli is the one told by Gianluca Barbera in ‘The last night of Raul Gardini’, in bookstores from 13 January for the publisher Chiarelettere (Pages 240, Price 16 euros), optioned by the production company Mompracem (Manetti Bros., Carlo Macchitella, Beta Film) for transposition into a television series. In the novel the author, who collaborates on the cultural pages of ‘Il Giornale’, wonders about Gardini’s sudden departure from the scene from which “too many have benefited”. Especially since that same morning Gardini would have had to go to the prosecutor’s office to be heard by the prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro regarding the mother of all bribes, the maxi-tangent Enimont, an authentic sword of Damocles suspended over the entire Italian political class. In the novel Barbera tells some ‘strange’ details of Gardini’s discovery in his bedroom in Palazzo Belgioioso. When the ambulance attendant entered, he found Gardini in a pool of blood with the gun in his hand. When he left the room to look for his colleague, on his return “he noticed that the gun was on the table. Before it was not there. Or do I remember correctly? The man’s hands rested on his abdomen. Who had been to arrange them like that?”. Gardini was still breathing, writes Barbera, but many hitches slowed the transport: “They loaded him into an ambulance, after overcoming the resistance of the portly man in a suit and tie, who expected them to await the arrival of the police. They struggled not a little to get out. The van was blocking the passage again. They had to scream to make their way. When they arrived at the hospital there was nothing more to be done “, writes Barbera. While the country is shaking overwhelmed by scandals, the judiciary seems willing to close the case quickly, with a verdict – suicide – that leaves too many details unexplained. A solution that cannot satisfy the investigative journalist Marco Rocca, protagonist of this novel that spans the years of Tangentopoli and the First Republic, delivering for the first time to the reader the parable of a dynasty, that of the Ferruzzi, long second only to the Agnelli for wealth and international prestige. On behalf of an important newspaper, Rocca closely follows the Enimont affair. The investigation will lead him along a dangerous path, amidst the ambiguities and silence of the various protagonists, anonymous threats, attempts on his life and too many ghosts of the past that gradually resurface, fueling new suspicions and mysteries. A labyrinthine investigation to arrive at an unexpected and sensational truth. A thriller whose protagonists have been at the center of the news for years, from Enrico Cuccia to Antonio Di Pietro, and again Bettino Craxi, Giulio Andreotti, Carlo Sama, Sergio Cusani, Luigi Bisignani, Gabriele Cagliari and many others. A decisive and unforgettable junction of Italian history told as no one had done before.