Mario Scaramella

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Mario Scaramella (born April 23, 1970[1]) is an Italian lawyer, self-styled security consultant and nuclear waste expert[2] who came to international prominence in 2006 in connection with the poisoning of the ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko. He served as an investigator and adviser to the controversial Mitrokhin Commission set up by Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party in order to investigate supposed links between Berlusconi's political rivals, including his rival for the premiership (now Prime Minister) Romano Prodi and the KGB. Scaramella is alleged to have collaborated with the president of the commission Paolo Guzzanti in garnering false evidence to link Prodi with the KGB.[3][4] Prodi has said he intends to sue over the allegations.[5][6] Scaramella is currently under investigation by the Italian justice department for calumny[7] and illegal weapons trade,[8] accusations which Scaramella has replied to in an interview in L'Espresso.[1]

While working for the Mitrokhin Commission, Scaramella claimed a Ukrainian ex-KGB agent living in Naples, Alexander Talik, conspired with three other Ukrainians to assassinate him and Senator Guzzanti. The Ukrainians were arrested, but Talik claimed that Scaramella had invented the story of the assassination attempt, which brought the calumny charge on him. Talik also claimed that rocket propelled grenades sent to him in Italy had in fact been sent by Scaramella himself.[7]

Contents

[edit] Career

Scaramella was born in Naples and still lives in the city. In March 1989, at the age of nineteen, he founded an "environmental police force" with eight young associates.[9] He managed to obtain a gun license with a written recommendation from a family friend who worked in the National Antimafia Commission. Afterwards, with a fishing/hunting guard ID, Scaramella introduced himself as an "inspector" to two assistant district attorneys in a small municipality outside Naples, asking their support for his policing activities. He was assigned a police squad and started seizing properties for a variety of environmental crimes, ranging from sealing public bathrooms in Capri to seizing a clandestine horse track controlled by a local Mafia boss. However, in June 1991, an official grew suspicious after noticing that Scaramella never signed any paperwork, and he was indicted and found guilty of impersonating a police officer. He was ordered to pay a fine, but the verdict was reversed on appeal. The appeals court found that the term he had used, "inspector", did not necessarily indicate a police inspector.[9]

[edit] Academic background

According to his own resume, between 1996 and 2000 he served as a professor of environmental law at the Externado University and the University of Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia. He also said to have held a post in environmental crime at the University of Naples. The Evening Standard, who interviewed Scaramella,[2] however say they have not been able to confirm any part of his academic career. The University of Naples has claimed never to have heard of him.[10][11] According to a former member of the controversial Mitrokhin Commission to which Scaramella was a consultant (2002–2006), he provided different university references when requested on different occasions.[4]

Until 2006, Scaramella was best known for a memo claiming that Soviet submarine K-8 left 20 nuclear mines in the Bay of Naples in 1970. He claimed that he had long been involved in investigating the smuggling of radioactive material by the KGB and its successors.[12]

[edit] The Environmental Crime Prevention Program

Main article: Environmental Crime Prevention Program

Between 2000 and 2002 he was secretary general of the Naples based organization Environmental Crime Prevention Program (ECPP), another empty shell which directly passed to have second plenary conference in 1997 in order to better convince of its legitimacy as an intergovernmental organization. He then managed to convince NATO to fund him, opening an office in Vilnius, Lithuania, before managing to acquire a first temporary, then permanent observatory status at the London Convention, an international group linked to the International Maritime Organization. According to the International Herald Tribune, this "phony organization" then signed on October 12, 2000, a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation with the Secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Environment, which is part of the United Nations Environment Programme. One of his few public appearances was in 2002 at a security related conference, giving a lecture on "space anti-terror technologies".[13] ECPP's observership's status to the London Convention/Protocol meetings was withdrawn in November 2007 <IMO secretariat>.

[edit] Poisoning

Main article: Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

On November 1, 2006 Scaramella met the ex-Russian FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko for lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, London. Scaramella has stated he ate nothing and drank only water at the restaurant. On December 1, 2006 he was taken to University College Hospital, and it was confirmed that he has been exposed to Polonium-210, the substance which was thought to have been eaten by Alexander Litvinenko at the aforementioned lunch, and which killed him.[14] Although Scaramella initially denied having the substance in his body, his lawyer made a statement on the same day saying that they would make no comment until the results of the tests were finalised.[15] A room at Ashdown Park Hotel, in Sussex, where Scaramella is thought to have stayed whilst in the U.K. has been sealed off due to possible contamination.

Some news outlets have speculated that Scaramella may have been Litvinenko's assassin.[16]

On December 3 Italian Senator Paolo Guzzanti was quoted after speaking with Scaramella by phone, saying health officials had told Scaramella the dose of polonium he had received is usually fatal. Guzzanti told Reuters:

"They also said so far, nobody could ever survive this poison, so it is very unlikely he could. But, if he doesn't collapse in three months, there is a kind of hope ... They said that every six months ... the radioactivity decreases by half".[17]

Latest news inform that he was only exposed to minute traces of polonium.[10]

Litvinenko's brother Maxim, who lives in Italy, told that Scaramella wanted to use his brother as a source for his research into Italian politicians and their alleged links to the Russian intelligence services. According to Maxim, one of the things Alexander Litvinenko did for Scaramella was sit down in front of a video camera in early 2006 in Rome. Litvinenko said that the video should not be leaked to the press, and warned that he personally knew nothing about Prodi. However he went on saying, in front of camera, that former FSB deputy chief Anatoly Trofimov warned him in 2000 that he should not move to Italy because Prodi was "one of their men".[18] Maxim said he was paid €200 in cash to translate on the day Scaramella recorded the video. Scaramella paid Alexander Litvinenko €500-600 to cover travel expenses.[18]

[edit] Arrest

On December 24, 2006, Scaramella returned to Italy where he was immediately arrested by DIGOS, a division of the Italian national police. He is charged with calumny,[7] gunrunning, and violating state secrets.[19] Scaramella was accused by Pietro Saviotti, a Rome prosecutor, of being involved in shipments of arms intended for an attempt on his own life and that of Senator Guzzanti.[9] The case concerns on Scaramella's accounts to police of a plot against his life by the ex-Ukrainian agent Alexander Talik.[18] Prosecutors suspect Scaramella may have made this false flag plot up to pressure Litvinenko to give him information he wanted, or to make himself seem more credible as a parliamentary consultant. According to court documents, Talik said that Scaramella once asked him to sign a letter making false accusations against an unidentified Russian. The private meeting took place after Scaramella had told police Talik was trying to kill him. Talik told police:

"He showed me the police statement and then showed me a letter that I should have signed, but I didn't do it because they were lies."[18]

A judge denied Scaramella bail, citing concerns that he might flee.[18]

[edit] The Mitrokhin Commission

Main article: Italian Mitrokhin Commission

Scaramella's repeated offers to collaborate with the Italian secret services were all rejected in the 1990s by the Italian government.[18] Nonetheless, from 2003 to 2006 he worked for the Italian Parliament's Mitrokhin Commission investigating KGB activity in Italy. Several Italian newspapers have reported interceptions of telephone calls between the president of the commission, Paolo Guzzanti, a member of ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, and Mario Scaramella (on November 30, 2006 in Corriere della Sera[3] and on December 1, 2006 in L'Unità[4]). In the interceptions, Guzzanti declared that the Mitrokhin Commission's unstated goal was to depict Romano Prodi as tied to the KGB, and financed by Moscow in order to discredit him. Scaramella, according to the interceptions, was to collect false witnesses among KGB refugees in Europe to support this aim. The Mitrokhin Commission was shut down in 2006 without any concrete result provided, a new parliamentary commission instituted to investigate about it.

According to prosecutor Pietro Salvitti, cited by La Repubblica and who has indicted Scaramella, Nicolò Pollari, head of SISMI indicted in the Imam Rapito affair, as well as SISMI n°2, Marco Mancini, arrested in July 2006 for the same reason, were some of the informers, alongside Mario Scaramella, of senator Paolo Guzzanti. Beside targeting Romano Prodi and his staff, this "network", according to Pietro Salvitti's words, also aimed at defaming General Giuseppe Cucchi (current director of the CESIS), Milan's judges Armando Spataro, in charge of the Imam Rapito case, and Guido Salvini, as well as La Repubblica reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo.[20] The investigation also showed a connection between Scaramella and the CIA, in particular through Filippo Marino, one of Scaramella's closest partners since the 1990s and co-founder of the ECPP, who lives today in the US. Marino has acknowledged in an interview an association with former and active CIA officers, including Lou Palombo, who worked 22 years for Langley's agency, and Robert Lady, former CIA station chief in Milan, indicted by prosecutor Armando Spataro for having coordinated the abduction of Abu Omar, the Imam Rapito.[9]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Mitrokhin al veleno. Intervista a Mario Scaramella (Italian). L'Espresso (30 November 2006). Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
  2. ^ a b "Sushi bar man is nuclear waste expert", The Evening Standard, 2006-11-25. Retrieved on 2006-12-08. 
  3. ^ a b Così la Mitrokhin indagava su Prodi (Italian). Corriere della Sera (30 November 2006). Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
  4. ^ a b c Mitrokhin, la magistratura indaga, l'Udc prende le distanze (Italian). L'Unità (1 December 2006). Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
  5. ^ "Prodi takes action on KGB 'smear'", BBC, 2006-12-01. Retrieved on 2006-12-02. 
  6. ^ Barber, Tony. "Prodi to sue over allegations of KGB links", Financial Times, 2006-12-01. Retrieved on 2006-12-02. 
  7. ^ a b c "Scaramella questioned in Rome over arms trafficking allegations", The Independent, 2006-12-28. Retrieved on 2007-01-24. 
  8. ^ "Mitrokhin, spunta il traffico d'armi Sospettato il consulente di Guzzanti", La Repubblica, November 29, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-12-01. (Italian) 
  9. ^ a b c d "In Italy, the rise and fall of an impresario of espionage", International Herald Tribune, 2007-01-09. Retrieved on 2007-01-10. 
  10. ^ a b "Italian emerges as an odd footnote in Litvinenko case", International Herald Tribune, 2006-12-08. Retrieved on 2006-12-11. 
  11. ^ Stille, Alexander. "The Secret Life of Mario Scaramella", Slate Magazine, 2006-12-11. Retrieved on 2006-12-28. 
  12. ^ Milmo, Cahal; Popham, Peter and Bennetto, Jason. "Litvinenko 'smuggled nuclear material'", The Independent, 2006-11-29. Retrieved on 2007-01-24. 
  13. ^ Portail d'informations Ce site est en vente!
  14. ^ "Pair test positive for polonium", BBC News, 2006-12-01. Retrieved on 2006-12-08. 
  15. ^ "UK finds two more polonium cases in spy probe", Yahoo! News, 2006-12-01. Retrieved on 2006-12-08. 
  16. ^ "Tracce di polonio su due aerei British Airways Un amico della spia uccisa accusa Scaramella", La Repubblica, November 29, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-12-01. (Italian) 
  17. ^ "UPDATE 5-Russian spy contact says poisoned over shared secrets", Reuters, December 2, 2006. 
  18. ^ a b c d e f "Italy gives Litvinenko contact withering welcome", Reuters, 2007-01-05. Retrieved on 2007-01-24. 
  19. ^ "Dead spy's Italy contact arrested", BBC News, 2006-12-24. Retrieved on 2006-12-24. 
  20. ^ Il falso dossier di Scaramella - "Così la Russia manipola Prodi", La Repubblica, 11 January 2007 (Italian)

[edit] External links