Giancarlo Galan, the former Berlusconi minister and governor of Veneto, involved ten years ago in the MOSE scandal, was interviewed by Corriere della Sera. He tells the newspaper about his new life after the plea deal for corruption (2 years and 10 months and 2.6 million euros confiscated). He now lives in the woods, without the money he once had. «It was the only possible place: I have nothing left, I have no income, I live on the help of others. This is the old hunting lodge of my grandfather Girolamo who was a lawyer. Now it belongs to my brother Alessandro and he gave it to me… he was worried about me: our other grandfather, who ended up in prison for the collapse of his bank, committed suicide. When they put me in prison, Alessandro already saw the cyclical nature of history… he also gave me that car”, he says of the man who was once the most powerful man in the Veneto. He confesses that he has thought about suicide: «I have thought about it very often, even about the methods. In prison I was able to sharpen the tin of a can of tuna, a perfect blade. Bad thoughts, I also had them while looking at these trees, I was looking for the branch that could support me… Unfortunately I lost all my passion: reading, fishing… What kept me from the irreparable situation were a few friends and my daughter Margherita.”
«My wife left me, the houses are registered in her name. I just want to survive”
«My wife – he says – left me and lives with Margherita in a house made available by a friend. We haven’t lived together for a year. To see my daughter I use the excuse of feeding the birds left there in the aviaries. The house in Rovinj and the one in Lussino are registered in my wife’s name, I only ask that she let me survive… in any case now I have a half-girlfriend, let’s call it an affectionate friendship, a very old acquaintance from when I was a boy.” And the financial resources are not high. On the contrary.
«For my pension I had to turn to the CISL, let’s see. They took away my annuity”, she explains.
The sentence
«I was condemned by the Court of Auditors to pay 5 million for image damage to the Region, until I pay the balance I cannot have credit cards and current accounts because they systematically take everything away from me. I’m forced to live in the black. I tried to open an account in Lithuania and after twenty days I had to close it. Then in Austria and they told me that it can’t be done because I am a “politically exposed person”. To be clear: I gave away my 300,000 euro boat for the price of an engine, I sold all the wines from my fabulous cellar on eBay, if I go to lunch with someone I’m forced to get an offer or I choose the fixed price menus… I haven’t bought a shirt or trousers for almost ten years, this is darned. When I drive I’m careful not to exceed 80 so as not to consume too much petrol. This is how I am reduced,” said the former minister. No work, he’s “unapproachable”.
The relationship with Silvio Berlusconi
During his interview Galan explains that with Silvio Berlusconi “he wasn’t exactly the corporate soldier in uniform that he would have preferred”. She confesses to having testified in court in Milan for him on the Ruby affair (October 2012, ed.) by telling falsehoods. He declared his presence, in 2010, as Minister of Agricultural Policies, at a meeting between Berlusconi and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He said «that he heard they were talking about a certain Ruby, an Egyptian singer. It wasn’t true, I hadn’t heard anything.” He did it «because it was Berlusconi, the man who had changed my life, who had made me happy by making me earn a boatload of money in the most beautiful environment in the world. Because he was the most exceptional person I had been lucky enough to know and hang out with. Even today I have no resentment towards him.” He didn’t go to his funeral. «I said to myself: if he didn’t want to see me alive, why would he see me dead?».
(on the cover Giancarlo Galan in the Chamber in an archive photo. It was the press conference to illustrate his defense statement, Rome 23 June 2014. ANSA/GIUSEPPE LAMI)