"For thirty years I defended the giants of Capitalism. In the next thirty — I hope — I will defend its victims."
I take my degree in December 1986. A few months later, Prof. Giorgio Marinucci, full professor of criminal law at the State University of Milan, calls me to his chair as an assistant; almost at the same time I join the firm of Prof. Avv. Federico Stella, at the Catholic University, where Domenico Pulitanò has just arrived. I learn the theory of criminal law and the practice of corporate crime at the highest level.
In 1991 I am entrusted with the defence of a board member of Banco Ambrosiano in liquidation, a defendant in the bankruptcy trial tied to the circle of power around Roberto Calvi, the P2 lodge (Propaganda Due), the IOR. I argue the case in 1993. It is my baptism in the crime of the powerful.
The first life: defending Capital
For thirty years I defend the giants of Italian capitalism. I defend Eni and its subsidiaries — Agip, Saipem, Snamprogetti, Enichem (later Polimeri Europa and Versalis), Syndial (later Eni Rewind) — from 1989, while still at the Stella firm, until beyond 2008. From 1995 to 2006 I am in the historic trial of the public and private chemical industry over the Petrolchimico of Porto Marghera.
From 2008 I defend Telecom, charged with handling the Group's entire criminal-law docket: from the trials over irregularly registered SIM cards to the illegal dossier-gathering, up to a grave case of international corruption in Brazil. I defend Poste and, from 2000 to 2024, as lead counsel, the Belgian multinational Solvay — later divided, with the spin-off at the end of 2023, into Syensqo and Solvay. I am in the trials of greatest media prominence: the "Bussi sul Tirino case", the hexavalent chromium of Spinetta Marengo, the international arbitration with Edison. Until 24 July 2024 I also defend Syensqo in the new trial for PFAS pollution — the one that arises downstream of the historic trial which ended, at first instance, with the conviction of Miteni alone.
I have been the publisher of two criminal-law journals, one of which, Diritto Penale Contemporaneo, edited by Francesco Viganò, was a point of reference for the Italian criminal-law world. Since 2012 TopLegal has listed me among the market leaders in environmental criminal law; in 2015 Le Fonti named me lawyer of the year in the same field.
The break
My relations with that world — Eni, Telecom, Solvay and the systems of power that revolve around them — break down traumatically on 24 July 2024. The reason is my decision to join the proceedings as a civil party against Eni in a trial in which I am the victim, together with a public prosecutor, of a calumny which — according to the Prosecutor's Office and according to me — is part of a wide-ranging criminal course of conduct, committed by a criminal association formed inside Eni to sabotage the trials for international corruption.
I have been ostracised by the community of lawyers for big business. And in this, as always, there is good and there is bad.
The second life
The experience accumulated on the upper floors of Capital has no equal in Italy. I am ready to use it from the opposite front of the conflict — that of the victims — at last closer to an idea of justice. It is from here that this blog is born.
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