He was a mafia boss, now he's hiding from his former associates. Brut. met with a former mobster from one of the world's most powerful criminal organizations: Italy's 'ndrangheta.
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00:00But why didn't you ask your father to do this?
00:04Because in drangas it's a given that when it's something like this,
00:08an infamy, a betrayal, it's up to the closest relative to wash it.
00:12It's like saying, if one of us betrays, he dies.
00:16I'll kill him myself, because I'm the father.
00:18Or I'll kill him myself, because I'm the son.
00:31A bandit tries to kill you by making as little noise as possible.
00:35But you can't exclude anything else.
00:38They can try to make it an accident.
00:41It would be preferable to have them found by the police.
00:44We've seen it, but history teaches us that they can also kill you in the middle of the street.
00:49It's not easy to survive.
00:51You think I'm alive because they don't want to kill me?
01:01The Androngheta crime syndicate.
01:03The Androngheta is the homegrown mafia from Calabria, a region in southern Italy,
01:08and the group that imports almost all of the cocaine consumed in Europe.
01:12One of our reporters, Raphael Tressit, was able to meet with the former mob boss,
01:16but on one condition.
01:18The interview couldn't take place at his home,
01:20so instead they met at a remote house in the countryside.
01:24Obviously, he didn't want anyone to recognize him,
01:27but he did give his last name, Bonaventura,
01:30the same name as one of the most famous mafia clans in Italy.
01:41I'm alive because I don't go out.
01:43I live inside my house, thinking like an ex-Androngheta.
01:48I try not to exist.
01:51I try not to exist.
01:54People don't see me. People don't know where I live.
01:57People don't know anything about me.
02:03My name is Luigi Bonaventura.
02:05I was born in a family in Drangata called the Vrenna-Bonaventura family.
02:10My grandfather was one of the most important bosses in Calabria.
02:17When I was born, my family was already fighting a fight.
02:21The fight was the Calabrian war, the war of Drangata.
02:25It was a war until the death of one of the last men of one of the two families.
02:35I had a very traumatic childhood,
02:38made of violence, of a hard upbringing,
02:42of indoctrination.
02:45Actually, I was never a child,
02:48so I was raised as a child soldier.
02:57Can you explain how you grew up?
03:00I was trained as a child, educated with Drangatist education,
03:04as a child, to then kill.
03:07Already as a child, they took you to slaughterhouses,
03:10they showed you how they killed animals,
03:13they made you drink blood, they made you eat raw meat,
03:16they made you peel some animals, kill some animals,
03:19and then they made you do domestic violence with death.
03:27In a family in Drangata, when you are little,
03:30it is consensual to have to deal with violence.
03:34When I was little, my father and my uncles brought weapons home,
03:38they assembled them, they disassembled them,
03:41the game was to reassemble or disassemble them as soon as possible,
03:45to clean them.
03:47It was a game, it was fascinating.
03:50It is not that I understood precisely that they were tools of death.
03:55When later I understood that it was true that other children,
03:58boys, played with weapons,
04:01I understood the difference,
04:04that their weapons were toy weapons,
04:07mine were real weapons.
04:10So I started shooting when I was little,
04:13I started shooting in the air.
04:23I would certainly have shot in some desolate countryside,
04:26as a child, let's talk about a child,
04:29but as I got older, between 12, 13, 14 years old,
04:32we would go directly to isolated places
04:35where we trained,
04:38my father and my uncles taught us
04:41to handle, to adopt more weapons.
04:49What kind of weapons were they?
04:51They were guns of various calibers,
04:54of various brands, they were rifles.
04:57There was the automatic rifle,
05:00the machine gun, in short, there were various weapons.
05:08So it has a shot, it has a way of holding it,
05:11it has a way of taking aim,
05:14in short, many techniques that you gradually make your own,
05:17as if they had always been yours.
05:20It was fascinating, however, you do not have the cognition
05:23that then you will use the same weapons on people.
05:27It was fascinating, however, you do not have the cognition
05:30that then you will use the same weapons on people.
05:34I was still a little boy,
05:37I could have been 16 years old, I think,
05:4016 years old or something,
05:43the drangata was growing,
05:46we are talking about a drangata that,
05:49relatively recently, came out of the personal kidnapping period,
05:52which then, by blocking the personal kidnappings,
05:55went to other businesses, like cocaine.
05:58From the 1970s to the 1990s,
06:01the drangata was used by rich business leaders from the north of Italy,
06:04but they changed strategy when they saw how lucrative the drug trade was,
06:07so they started forming alliances with drug cartels from Latin America.
06:10So they started forming alliances with drug cartels from Latin America.
06:13Why did the drangata become the largest importer of cocaine in Europe?
06:16Why did the drangata become the largest importer of cocaine in Europe?
06:19Well, look, Dr. Tresa,
06:22the drangata has the power
06:25to distribute anything in any corner of the world.
06:28That's why the cartels,
06:31whether Brazilians, Colombians, Venezuelans, Bolivians or Mexicans,
06:34prefer to have to do with the drangatists,
06:37prefer to have to do with the drangatists,
06:40because they are very mixed up in every continent.
06:43The drangata pays,
06:46and there is a low rate of injustice,
06:49so it is the ideal partner for them.
06:52The turnover of the drangata is just under 53 billion euros.
06:55The turnover of the drangata is just under 53 billion euros.
06:58To get to almost 53 billion euros,
07:01you have to add the GDP of Paraguay,
07:04the GDP of Bosnia and the GDP of Iceland.
07:07Did a lot of things change?
07:10Did a lot of money come in?
07:13Yes, a lot has changed.
07:16And here, however, there is an import,
07:19a port of capital,
07:22I mean, I found myself in a context of war.
07:25So it was drangata against drangata,
07:28family against family.
07:34I know it's very complicated for you to talk about it,
07:37but in the 90s you were forced to switch to arms,
07:40but in the 90s you were forced to switch to arms,
07:43to take care of a homicide situation.
07:46Can you explain the situation to us?
07:49I talked about the 90s,
07:52about this mission,
07:55where there was a part of the rival clans
07:58that threatened the existence of our family,
08:01also the physical iniquity of our family.
08:04So our family decided to take action,
08:07also because a few months earlier,
08:10in August 1990,
08:13they killed the son of one of our assistants.
08:16So I started this action,
08:19where the leader had to die.
08:22At that time, he claimed to be the leader of the city of Crotone.
08:25A double homicide happened yesterday in Crotone.
08:28There would have been a second person
08:31for whom the charge of double homicide was hypothesized.
08:35My role was that of sentry,
08:38of information postman
08:41when the people who had to die were on the spot,
08:44and also of support,
08:47because they would have been able to escape.
08:50But in reality, the command took action
08:53and killed many people,
08:56I don't know how many were injured.
08:59Do you have blood on your hands?
09:02Of course I have blood on my hands,
09:05I'm not lying.
09:08When I found myself in the homicide,
09:11I didn't feel bad at all.
09:14I had everything in my head,
09:17everything was clear and precise.
09:20But at the end of the day,
09:23I didn't feel the situation
09:26that I was in.
09:33I was four years old,
09:36I had become the leader of a very important family.
09:42I married a woman
09:45who didn't belong to my ethnic group.
09:48And so, little by little,
09:51they gave me the joy of living,
09:54of living differently.
10:04When I have two children,
10:07I decide not to educate them.
10:10I often walk down the corridor of the house
10:13asking myself about the education
10:16that I would have given them.
10:19I often realized that even if I was violent,
10:22I was preparing them for the education
10:25belonging to that ethnic group.
10:28Talking to my wife,
10:31who was foreign to certain environments,
10:34even if I had not told her
10:37I had to take on my responsibilities.
10:43In 2006, I told my father
10:46what I had conceived,
10:49that I wanted to make a difference
10:52from that lifestyle, from that belonging.
10:55He didn't tell me anything.
10:58After that, the family got together
11:01and decided to eliminate the problem
11:04from my life.
11:09On the evening of September 18th, 2006,
11:12he and some other people
11:15were shooting at me.
11:18In the meantime,
11:21my father had taken out a gun
11:24and shot me 12 or 13 times.
11:30So I responded to the fire
11:33trying not to give him all the blood.
11:36I tried to stay behind him
11:39to give him less volume.
11:42I thought I had to save myself
11:45and neutralize him
11:48trying not to kill him.
11:51So I shot him in the legs
11:54and in fact I wounded him in the groin.
11:57When you see your father in front of you
12:00what comes to your mind?
12:03I was waiting for that moment
12:06because it was 11 or 11.30 am
12:09and I was under the house.
12:12I didn't expect to be shot.
12:15I was still hoping for my son.
12:18The projectiles were aimed at me
12:21and the ballistics found many projectiles
12:24at the height of the man.
12:27I managed to survive thanks to the training
12:30that I had.
12:33I was very lucky
12:36because God was watching me.
12:39Why didn't you ask your father to do this?
12:42Because it's in the drag to touch
12:45that when it's something like this
12:48it's an infamy, a betrayal.
12:51It's up to the closest relative to wash it.
12:54If he dies, I'll kill him myself
12:57because I'm his father
13:00or I'll kill him because I'm his son.
13:03It gives a sense of power.
13:06After this episode
13:09I suppose you never talked to each other
13:12because what happened after this episode?
13:15He was arrested for this attempted murder
13:18and I decided to collaborate with the police.
13:24In February 2007
13:27I collaborated with the police.
13:30It was unthinkable that my words
13:33could come out of my mouth.
13:36It's true that the day I made
13:39the first verbal complaint
13:42was three and a half years ago.
13:45I didn't do anything else
13:48but decide.
13:51You have to structure it in a way
13:54that is difficult to explain.
13:57How many police officers did you collaborate with?
14:00I gave my collaborative contribution
14:03to 14 Italian police officers.
14:06I contributed a minimum
14:09to the arrest of more than 500 drug dealers.
14:16I gave a mapping
14:20of what is the Drangata
14:23and what is its organigram.
14:26I also gave my testimony
14:29to the first drug dealer
14:32of the Drangata
14:35who is a drug dealer in Saudi Arabia.
14:44I created a real gap in the wall of Ometa
14:48in a vulgar and infamous way.
15:13How do you live?
15:16Are you forced to live hidden?
15:19I am forced to live hidden.
15:22I'm not a talker.
15:25Today the mafias kill.
15:28They kill the repentants.
15:31But what can I do?
15:34I have a relationship with death.
15:37I have been taught to live with death since I was a child.
15:40So I live with death.
15:43I'm in debt with death.