Giuseppe Graviano: 'My grandfather went into business with Berlusconi'

"My grandfather Filippo Quartararo formed a company with Silvio Berlusconi in 1969-70, to invest his own money and that of other people. He put in 4-5 billion lire but the total amount of the investment was 20 billion lire" of the time. This was said by boss Giuseppe Graviano, answering the prosecutors as a witness at the Baiardo trial in Florence. Graviano said he learned of these investments after his father's death, in 1982, from his grandfather Quartararo, who between 1982 and 1983 would have introduced him to Berlusconi. "There was a meeting in Milan in a hotel with Berlusconi, me, my grandfather and my cousin Salvo," "I remember a private note." Giuseppe Graviano's testimony via video link was interrupted due to an audio problem, in order to improve the transmission signal. Before the interruption, again answering the prosecutor, the boss had claimed that "there was a private note" regarding the investments, attesting to their existence. "Were the names of the investors on it?", the prosecutors asked. "They were, but I can't confirm it well," he replied, while still making it understood that Berlusconi's name was on it as well. "20% of the wealth produced by these investments would have been returned to the investors," he also recalled, specifying that for his family, the returns of the profits drawn from the investments were handled with "my cousin Salvo." "I never received anything from these investments." "When my father died in 1982," he added, "my grandfather Filippo Quartararo told me about this investment and asked me if I could follow this matter with my cousin Salvatore. My father was not interested in this investment." Again according to Graviano's account, over time there would have been several meetings with Berlusconi. Prosecutor Gestri asks if he remembers them. "One took place before I was arrested, in an apartment in Milan," said Giuseppe Graviano, confirming that investigators showed him a video of an apartment identified as the location of this meeting with the Cavaliere. "There was a residence with a swimming pool, it was near Milan. I recognized the residence but not the apartment," he said. Another meeting "may have been in 1986, I was a fugitive. Berlusconi knew it, all the newspapers were talking about it." What was the subject of the meetings? the prosecutors asked. "We talked," came the reply, "about the names of the people to be inserted into the companies in which the money was invested." In the meeting that Graviano dates to December 1993, "in the apartment there were me, my cousin and Berlusconi, accompanied by a person but I don't remember who it was." "It was a meeting to settle everything" and to set a date "in February 1994 to formalize the names of the people who were to enter the companies." Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA