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A few good friends By Meron Rapoport and Gidi Weitz Tags: David Appel, Israel News  here are places in Italy where it is not customary to say the word "Mafia" out loud. Not customary in the sense of quite dangerous. Crotone, a small and impoverished town at the tip of Italy's "boot" is one of them. Judges, investigators, journalists and ordinary citizens know that the 'Ndrangheta, a crime organization that is less famous than its Sicilian counterparts but is just as strong and cruel, controls Crotone in the same way that it controls substantial parts of the southern Italian region of Calabria. But when you ask anyone in Crotone whether they have ever encountered the 'Ndrangheta or if they think that such-and-such a person belongs to it, they shrug their shoulders. What do they know. Nevertheless, there is silence and then there is silence. During a visit to Crotone two years ago it took just a few days to realize that a special silence surrounds Salvatore Aracri, who was introduced as a "tourism entrepreneur." No, people there said, we don't know him very well, don't really know what he does, and gently hinted that we should change the subject. Aracri is a hot name now in Crotone. A hot name all over Italy in fact, with a strong connection to David "Dudi" Appel, the Israeli businessman who wanted to build Europaradiso, a huge tourist city in Crotone that was to be the largest tourism project in the world. About two weeks ago the Italian police raided Aracri's home and those of other Italians, including public officials, who were connected in some way to the project. It was part of a comprehensive campaign against Mafia organizations in the Crotone region. Police arrested 24 people on suspicion of belonging to the local Mafia and of engaging in activities such as blackmail, drug dealing and planning the murder of a prosecutor who dealt with the Mafia. Advertisement Europaradiso appears prominently in the arrest and search warrants issued by the district department for Mafia affairs in the prosecutor's office in Catanzaro, the capital of Calabria. According to documents obtained by Haaretz and published here for the first time, the 'Ndrangheta viewed the project as "a tremendous source of profits, both direct and indirect." Aracri is mentioned often in the documents as "Appel's representative in Crotone" on the one hand, and as a person working in coordination with the Mafia to promote Europaradiso, on the other. Appel himself is mentioned more than 10 times in the document as the "initiator of the plan," as one of the main shareholders in Madpit, the company that managed the project, and as the person who allegedly paid the former director general of the Crotone municipality 10,000 euros for "financial services." A document submitted to an Italian court enumerating the alleged crimes in connection to the affair contains passages from the transcriptions of wiretapped conversations between Aracri and Rami Avivi, one of the members of Appel's Israeli team on the project. In one, Aracri asks Avivi to pay money to municipal employees - the city engineer and the director-general - for their contribution to Europaradiso. The prosecutors, from the Catanzaro Province Anti-Mafia Department, suspect that the payments eventually transferred by Aracri to the two men were a bribe. Appel has already said, in one of the interviews he gave to the local press, that it was Aracri who brought him to Crotone. Avivi, who went to Italy 48 times for Appel and is now a businessman, presents it in the same way. In an interview Avivi emphasizes that he served only as Appel's interpreter in the project. "Aracri was actually the man who brought Dudi Appel to Italy. Aracri participated in all the meetings held by Appel and his people with representatives of the administration and the region regarding the project." (In his response to this article, Appel describes Aracri as "an intermediary who sold [him] the site for the purpose of building the project" and nothing more.) An Italian member of Parliament from Crotone told the prosecutors, Salvatore Dolce and Pierpaolo Bruni, that Aracri once said to her, "Mr. Appel and I are the same person." According to reports in the local press, Aracri attended several meetings of Appel and his team with senior government officials in Crotone. He also reportedly took part in a meeting between the heads of the Calabria district and a number of Israelis including Appel, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, former Military Intelligence head Amos Malka and others. Burg was the chairman of the project directorate at the time, and Malka was introduced as his security adviser. The spokesman for the president of the Calabria district said at the time that the presence of senior Israeli figures such as Burg and Malka impressed the Italians. Burg and Malka, it should be mentioned, abandoned Europaradiso after the project began to run into difficulties. Aracri's role in Europaradiso is described as follows in the documents presented by the prosecution in connection to the current investigation: "Salvatore Aracri was investigated for the crime of handling and bringing to fruition the Europaradiso project in coordination with organized crime, and primarily in coordination with the gang that he now heads, and with the help of his brother Francesco Aracri, a man who is strongly planted in the crime circles related to the drug trade.... Aracri oversaw the acquisition of the plot on which this residential-tourism complex was supposed to be built, intervened in the political and administrative activity of the Crotone municipality and forced several city council members, and above all the chairman, to approve resolutions in support of Europaradiso; Aracri made criminal deals - among other ways by distributing money to government officials with the ability to exert a positive influence on the implementation of the project - at various levels, the municipality, the government and the European Union... In this connection Aracri attempted, directly or indirectly, to threaten Marilina Intrieri, an MP who publicly criticized the interest shown by the Mafia in the Europaradiso project; to implement the project, people close to organized crime ran as candidates in the local elections. As a result of this criticism the MP received threatening letters accompanied by bullet casings." Interested party The documents portray Aracri as having connections with the Mafia in the Crotone district and beyond. He is friendly with Francesco Russelli, who heads the Mafia in Papanice, the locality in Crotone that is home to both men and which is known for its lively Mafia activity. The prosecutors claim that Russelli's gang is behind numerous instances of extortion and drug trafficking. Aracri invited Russelli to the Crotone municipal council and spoke with him and with figures associated with other Mafia organizations. Rumors about the 'Ndrangheta's interest in Europaradiso had been around for some time. Intrieri, then an MP for the Democratic Left, was one of the first to translate the rumors into specific and public claims. She paid a price for doing so: She was not included on her party's slate in the last general election, in spring 2006. Intrieri claims that she was destroyed politically because of her opposition to Europaradiso, a claim that is supported by the prosecution. A search warrant issued in connection to the investigation stated that the leader of Intrieri's detractors in the party, Giuseppe Mercurio, was used by the Mafia to help push through the Europaradiso project. The deal was simple, according to investigators. The Mafia heads paid 50 euros to every person who voted in the Crotone municipal election for Mercurio, who in return promised the Mafia that "the moment he is elected to city council he will work on behalf of the crime organization in order to carry out the tourism project known as Europaradiso." The Israelis who worked with Appel were upset when questioned about Mafia involvement in the project at the time. Public relations man Zvi Friedman, who was in charge of marketing the project, told Haaretz Magazine two years ago, when the affair first became public: "I saw no Mafia and no bribery there, nothing, not directly and not indirectly." Appel backed up Friedman: "The use of the word Mafia has a very serious connotation, especially in a country like Italy that has declared all-out war against the Mafia," he said. "The use of untrue and unfounded information in connection with the project is likely to cause tremendous, irreversible and incalculable damage." Appel came to Crotone in 2004 to ascertain the location's suitability for his dream project, a continuation of or corrective to the failed "Greek Island project." The Italian prosecutors claimed that Aracri was in charge of buying farmland in northern Crotone, near the estuary of the Neto River, on which the grandiose project was supposed to rise. In March 2005 Appel and his people presented his vision to the Crotone city council in its chambers. Next to the estuary, Appel told the astonished listeners, a tourism city encompassing 1.5 million square meters will be built. The first stage of construction will consist of 30,000 vacation apartments, in buildings of 10 to 20 stories. It would be the largest such project in the world. A video clip made for Appel by director Ron Assoulin and starring actor Zvika Hadar promised future visitors a hotel boulevard in green forests, huge fountains and theaters that would stage musicals from London and Broadway, a 120,000-seat football stadium and a children's city that would make Euro Disney look like a kindergarten in comparison. The envisioned city, Appel promised, would be able to accommodate 60,000 people - Crotone's population - at a time. He gave the size of the anticipated investment as 500 billion euros, 500 times Crotone's annual budget. And most important, it would provide 15,000 jobs, ending Crotone's chronic unemployment. "It seems like a dream, but it's a reality," the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, Il Crotonese, wrote the next day. The prosecution says the Mafia demonstrated interest in Appel's dream early on. Antonio Forleo, a former chairman of the city council, told prosecutors that in June 2005 then-mayor Armando Riganello asked him to convene an extraordinary council session with a single agenda item: approving a draft amendment to the city's master plan to rezone the Europaradiso parcel from farmland to residential and tourism use. Forleo refused. "There was no concrete project, there were no documents that would permit me to convene the council," he told the prosecutors, Dolce and Bruni, referring to the plan submitted by the Europaradiso people. "There were only illustrated prospectuses." Windmills Soon after this incident Francesco Russelli visited Forleo in his city hall office. The prosecution's documents described him as the head of the crime family named for him and his brother, who is currently in prison. "Russelli asked me, in a friendly tone, to explain my position on the Europaradiso issue, inviting me to reconsider it using these exact words: 'The issue of Europaradiso interests us and interests me personally,'" Forleo related. Forleo got the hint. "I didn't want to tilt at windmills, to oppose pointlessly, if legally, what had already been decided behind the scenes," he told investigators. Forleo convened the council in a charged atmosphere of threats as Aracri led a group of "demonstrators" in the chambers who carried signs and called to the council members, "Be warned, we are watching you." Surprisingly, the council unanimously approved the rezoning. This development, the prosecutors argued, "clearly expresses the power of the Mafia gang operating in Crotone to influence the Crotone town council." In their documents, two council members described the people brought by Aracri to the session as the "creme de la creme of Papanice," understood by the prosecution to indicate that they were Mafia. In a recorded phone conversation the councilmen describe Aracri as the "leader of the gang." The prosecution considers that an unequivocal expression of the fact that, to the council members, he represented the Mafia and therefore they voted as he demanded. In Forleo's statements, as in those of many others, it was also said that one of those who was very active in promoting the project was Francesco Sulla, the director general of the municipality at the time. Forleo told investigators Sulla pressed for the project's approval, relating that on "innumerable occasions" he had seen Aracri sitting in Sulla's office and discussing Europaradiso. Sulla later became an adviser to the Europaradiso corporation founded by Appel, whose only director is his son Gil. Sulla was one of the main topics in a recorded conversation between Aracri and Avivi in August 2005, when Sulla was still the city's director general. In it Aracri told Avivi, Appel's interpreter, that they must pay tens of thousands of euros to several individuals involved in the project, including Sulla and the city engineer, and said, "That's something that must be done now... and we have to give Sulla at least another 15,000! He's working like crazy!" Avivi reassured him, "all right, all right," promising to see to the payments. A prosecution document says Aracri was questioned in connection with the fact that "he generously distributed monetary gifts to public officials," including Sulla and the municipal engineer and others with "the power to exert positive influence on the implementation of the Europaradiso project, even while doing things that are contrary to the duties of the position." The city engineer, according to the documents, received 4,000 euros, while Sulla received 15,000 euros, "as partial payment for his illegal activity." Sulla admitted that he had received a substantial proportion of the amount - 10,000 euros - directly from Aracri and from Appel himself, "to whom the Europaradiso project should be credited," according to the prosecution's document. The document states that Sulla told investigators he received this money in January 2007, after leaving office, for "unexplained financial services." Mayor Riganello also received a small gift from Aracri when he passed the rezoning draft amendment - a motor scooter for his son. The end of the affair According to the prosecution documents, the connection between Aracri and Avivi remained close throughout 2004-2006. For example, according to the prosecution, in August 2005 Aracri reported to Avivi on "an illegal agreement" proposed by a Crotone businessman to help the project. The idea was to divert unused public funds for the infrastructure work of Europaradiso. Aracri told Avivi that the same figure had suggested reaching an agreement with several government companies operating in southern Italy over the issuing of "retroactive invoices" for public funds that had in fact not been used, with the money to be used at a second stage for Europaradiso. The document did not record Avivi's response to the suggestion. According to the prosecution's documents, Aracri also kept Avivi informed of obstructions to the progress of the project. The main problem was that the Calabria district, in coordination with the European Union, had decided to declare the area of the Neto River estuary, the proposed site of the project, part of which had already been purchased, as a Special Protection Zone (ZPS, in Italian). If that were to happen, large-scale development of the land would be prohibited. Aracri and Sulla were brought in. According to the prosecution's documents they used their political connections in the Ministry of the Environment. They convinced the minister's bureau chief, Emilio Brogi, and the ministry's director general, Aldo Cosentino, to find some excuse to suspend the processing of the documents needed to declare the estuary a protected area. From an October 2005 conversation between Sulla and Brogi: Brogi: "I have good news... after intensive searches - yesterday I said I'd prepare everything, didn't I? - so we sent it back... We didn't send it to the EU, as the director [Cosentino] told us." Sulla: "Excellent, professor, this morning you did something that even you don't believe..." Brogi: "So we sent everything back to the Calabria district... And we said that 'it turns out that the material that was sent is incomplete.... And we must remind you that the announcement to the EU will be possible only after sending the full and complete material in accordance with EU requirements and that to date, despite the many contacts with the relevant ministries, the required documents have not yet arrived.'" Sulla: "Excellent, professor, excellent... I'm hanging on your words... If you phone me, set a meeting, I'll call the Israelis... I'll bring them here." A few days later, according to the documents, Aracri contacted the representative of the "Israelis," Avivi. The conversation is not fully cited in the prosecution document, but Aracri reportedly told Avivi he found a "concrete solution" to the problem of the nature reserves, "together with the minister of the environment and his staff," which was for the municipality to "reword" the request to withdraw the Special Protection Zone. The Crotone municipality, Aracri boasted again, is "in our hands." Aracri and Sulla did not stop at their Rome connections to the Environmental Ministry. Aracri also recruited Ricardo Menghi of the EU. Menghi promised to help disrupt the presentation of the appropriate documents for the Neto River estuary in the European "data bank," and for that purpose he even recruited an Irish partner. In return for the service, Aracri paid him $10,000. "Menghi, all he ever wants is money," Aracri told his German partner in a phone conversation. Despite the efforts to shelve the documents they eventually reached the EU, which in December 2005 approved the creation of the Special Protection Zone. This is where the plot takes a sharp twist. Knife in hand Aracri began to fear he would not get his money from Appel. In one recorded conversation, he says that very soon all the institutions of the Crotone municipality would approve the first stage of the project (which included a modest plan for several hundred residential units), and then he "would take the knife in his hand" and tell the Israelis: "Either you pay me or I won't give you the permit, because in the municipality everyone agrees with me." In another conversation, in March 2006, Aracri complained to his partner that despite all his efforts he had not yet received the proper compensation from Dudi Appel and therefore would not organize additional meetings for him with political figures until Appel paid him the entire sum he was requesting. Sulla, complained Aracri, had already received 10,000 euros from Europaradiso, whereas he himself had not been appropriately compensated although his "exposure to the project had already reached 270,000 euros." The prosecution's documents state that at around this time, in spring 2006, Aracri realized his phone calls were being monitored and stopped discussing sensitive issues related to Europaradiso. But his silence did not stop the investigators. As mentioned, in the new wave of arrests several senior Mafia members in Crotone were arrested and at present it is not clear where their investigation over Europaradiso will lead. In any event, it seems likely that the most recent revelations have put paid to the project. Instead of a hotel-lined avenue in the woods and tens of thousands of happy vacationers, Dudi Appel will have to dream about being acquitted on charges of bribing two mayors and a senior official in the Israel Lands Administration, in a trial being conducted on a weekly basis in a gray Tel Aviv courthouse. W Bookmark to del.icio.us   Knesset express Rightist party offers Jonathan Pollard top spot on Knesset list. 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