Confindustria Sicily is back. Like a phoenix, reborn from its ashes, the association that belonged to Mimì La Cavera – but also to Antonello Montante – after six years will once again have the sole representation of the island’s entrepreneurs. In Rome, in front of the national president Carlo Bonomi, the agreement will be ratified between Sicindustria (which groups the territories of Palermo, Messina, Caltanissetta, Agrigento, Ragusa and Trapani) and the two now former “lost eagles”, Confindustria Catania and Syracuse, returning to the nest.
The agreement, finalized with tumultuous diplomacy in the last month, it foresees a phase that some protagonists define «a start up of the new regional association». Certainly not a short transition, given that it will last six years. With an equal division, two years each, between the three souls: from now to 2023 the leader of Confindustria Sicilia will be a man of Sicindustria (the deputy vice president Alessandro Albanese, also at the helm of the Palermo association), in 2023/25 it will be up to Catania (President Antonello Biriaco has already been designated), Syracuse will close, which with Diego Bivona will carry the Confindustria “torch” until 2027. When, perhaps, the time will be ripe for a new structure: dissolution of Sicindustria and farewell to the autonomy of Catania and Syracuse, with a single regional representation structure and nine territorial delegations. Perhaps managing in these six years to reactivate Enna, since 2014 “undederalized” due to an insufficient level of associates.
We start again, therefore. With what, several sources sigh, is “the best possible compromise”, given the lack of agreement on the election of a president with no expiry date. To tell the truth, just over a month ago, a unitary hypothesis was more than flashed: crowning the first woman leader of Sicily. And there was also the right name: Maria Pia Prestigiacomo, vice president of Confindustria Siracusa, entrepreneur in the sectors of industrial services and energy, as well as older sister of the former minister Stefania. But the “Sicilian Marcegaglia” option was soon wrecked, especially due to the gale force winds coming from the center-west of the island. Catania and Syracuse alone did not have the strength to impose themselves and therefore Biriaco’s mediation to find a reconciliation was decisive. Also because, they say, given that “Rome was pressing” to recompose the regional representation (in fact broken at the end of 2015, Montante was in full swing; a circumstance of which Viale dell’Astronomia is, as if by magic, only now remembered), ‘had to “find a shared path, statute in hand”. And that is, he begins to lead the “sister” with more associates.
So we start immediately with Albanese, which he will have as his deputies Biriaco and Bivona. The new leader of Confindustria Sicilia is in fact the “highest in rank” of Sicindustria: the acting deputy vicar of Giuseppe Catanzaro, self-suspended president on May 28, 2018, after the guarantee notice in the second line of the investigation on the Montante system in Caltanissetta, for which, on charges of criminal association aimed at corruption, in recent days he received the notice of conclusion of the investigations.
Albanian, 55 years old, from Palermo, inherited Celf, a modular kitchen company, from his father Giuseppe (who passed away in 2007, two years after a conviction for aiding and abetting the mafia, whose sentence was overturned due to a formal defect), then converted into production of furniture for shops and offices , also launching into an entrepreneurial adventure, in the heart of Brancaccio, with a company that manufactured aubergine caponate. Since 2010 in the Confindustria orbit, he has gained important experience as a public manager, leading the Asi Consortium of Palermo, the Società Interporti Siciliani and holding the role of vice president at Gesap. Recently also jumped to the football news for Palermo’s lightning presidency, in recent years the name of Albanese is above all linked to Sicindustria. Who drove with a strong, more decisive attitude than the low profile of Catanzaro, using a carrot and a stick against the regional government and raising his voice several times on the economic emergency linked to Covid.
“But he is still a man in continuity with the Montante era” this is the criticism whispered above all by those who would have liked “a real breakthrough, also in terms of image”, perhaps with the Prestigiacomo presidency, or in any case with a leadership more clearly in discontinuity with the historic Antonello-boys group. Albanese, on the former anti-mafia champion sentenced to 14 years, has always been loyal. “The same ones who sentenced today – he stated in 2019 to ilsicilia.it – yesterday were all behind the door waiting to be received by Montante”. But to clarify to Repubblica: «Nobody denies Antonello. But our presence in the regional government has created more damage than anything else, we have learned the lesson ».
The new “timed” leader of Confindustria Sicilia it is not even touched upon by any of the Caltanissetta investigations. But his name, given the – legitimate, until proven otherwise – frequentation with Montante and other suspects, appears several times in the papers. There is the name of Albanese, among all those of the magic circle “in danger of life” in the anonymous complaint received in 2015 at Confindustria Sicilia, considered by the investigators to be a forgery by Montante. The latter, while with his dolphin Catanzaro happened by the bugs in the “room of legality” of the villa of Serradifalco, on January 14, 2016, defines a media strategy to defend himself from the «impressive overexposure, on crazy speculation, on the critical moment». And they speak of the “three letters” of solidarity to be signed by what the Nissen magistrates call the “courtiers of his court of miracles”. Among which, in the information of the mobile team, Albanese is also contemplated. Explicitly mentioned in a dialogue between Montante and Catanzaro, who comment on a hostile question by the M5S.
Catanzaro: no, they make the painting quote to mine quote to Gregori … citanu a Navarra … quote a …
Amount: in what sense do they quote …
Catanzaro: that natri we are all your friends and we are doing all business … Navarra that takes commissions wherever it is, Albanian that is president of Interporti Gregory Bongiorno that is growing disproportionately … ce … trying to … quote you. .. me … they try to put you in line with Ferlito … with Costanzo that is, they try to throw shit … but I the part of… (inc) … I’m worried …
There is also Albanese, in the “informal meeting of the regional board” at the end of July 2014 mentioned by the former Confindustria councilor Marco Venturi, also present, convened for the purpose of “contributing with an amount ranging from ten to twenty thousand euros” to finance the online version of The Hour, “to avoid media attacks by journalists.”
The next president of Confindustria Sicilia it ends up several times in intercepted conversations (even after the discovery of the Mafia investigation), without however ever showing conduct, not even ethically reprehensible. When, on May 19, 2016, he talks to the investigated entrepreneur Rosario Amarù, Albanese cheers him up with a joke: “‘inchia today are you, you Antonello and there was also Catanzaro, fuck a confederation of Crocettiani …”.
It is in the loop. And plays its associative role, but also the personal one, in the era of maximum splendor of the Montante galaxy. Who, however, is not ashamed to express to his loyalists the esteem he places in Albanian. Significant, in this sense, is an environmental interception of 2 October 2010 between the entrepreneur from Serradifalco and Amarù himself, together in a car. «During the journey – the mobile team reconstructs in the information to the prosecutors – Amarù asked if“ behind Catanzaro ”there was the presence of the Montante and if he governed it. The latter confirmed this, adding that he governed it mainly with regard to “Roman things”, since in this context he considered it incapable and considered it appropriate not to abandon it so as not to crumble “the system” ». But the most interesting part is a dialogue on Albanese itself.
Amount: On the right and we cannot abandon it also because the understood system is crumbling combà ne vale? non eee the only one I don’t know what kind of relationship you have the only one who is good besides tia combà is Albanian
Amarù: I agree with you!
Amount: No who understands no ca is fast
Amarù: There are no doubts!
Amount: Then fill in for more!
Albanian, “the only one who is good”, one who “understands” and is “fast”. From today he will lead the new old Confindustria Sicilia. A predestined. For the story; as well as for Montante.