ROME -- Giovanni La Lia, 70, founder of one of the first Forza Italia associations in Italy, has been placed under investigation in connection to phone calls made around the time of the 1992 and 1993 Cosa Nostra attacks. La Lia is under investigation for providing false police statements, Florence’s public prosecutor has said.

 The Cosa Nostra bombings of 1992 and 1993 killed ten people and damaged cultural property in Rome, Milan, and Florence. The mafia group targeted police forces and judges in efforts to improve the treatment of imprisoned mafia figures and create an agreement between Cosa Nostra and the state. The attacks most notably killed the judge Giovanni Falcone, killed in 1992 by a bomb placed in his car in Palermo.

 La Lia is under investigation in relation to the attacks, in particular phone calls he made to mafia figures that carried out and coordinated the bombings. He is being questioned for calls made in December 1993 to a phone found in the possession of the then-girlfriend of Filippo Graviano, who, along with his brother Giuseppe, was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for orchestrating the attacks. La Lia has also been questioned for calls made from the same phone to mafia figures. According to the public prosecutors, La Lia “made false statements [to police] and kept quiet, either partly or completely, what he knew about the facts that he had heard”.

 La Lia was first questioned in 1994 in relation to phone records which showed he had called mafia conspirators close to Giuseppe Gravino but was not charged. He was again questioned in July and October 2020 but was not convicted.

 Investigations into the attacks have previously been opened and closed on five occasions by Florence’s public prosecutor. There have been suspicions that former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and his senior advisor Marcello dell’Utri, who both co-founded the Forza Italia political party, were complicit in the 1993 attacks, although suspicions have not been proven.

 bq