Reporting from Italy: "My first goal was to survive and not put the insider in danger"

Sacha Biazzo is an award-winning investigative journalist specializing in organized crime, political corruption, and human rights violations. His work has appeared on PBS, Reuters, and RAI and been featured by BBC, The Guardian, and Vice.

He has won multiple prestigious awards, including the Forensic and Investigation Award (2022), the European Award for Investigative and Judicial Journalism (2021), and Reporter of the Year (Vergani Award) in 2017, 2019, and 2020. His investigations —Bloody Money, Black Lobby, and Camorra Entertainment — have led to major arrests.

Sacha is a research fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and teaches video investigative journalism at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan. His latest documentary, All the President’s Bosses, examines Donald Trump’s links to Italian-American organized crime.

For this episode of The Reporters, Sacha chose a 7-part blockbuster series that aired on Italian TV and in newspapers, for which he went undercover with a former mafia mobster to expose the web of crime inside Italy’s political class: “The Former Mafia Boss Exposing Corrupt Politicians.” The 8-minute clip below is a summary that appeared on Vice News.

Below are some highlights from our interview.

 Sacha Biazzo. Welcome to The Reporters.

Thank you for having me.

You’ve given us this terrific story about how you uncovered corruption at some of the highest levels in Italy, and in the strangest of places, which is the world of waste management. Trash. That’s always the cliché in America, right?

I think it's more common here in the U.S. to associate these two things. This was a pretty new topic in Italy, how the mafia was involved in the waste disposal and waste trafficking. But in the last decades, a lot of people started to collaborate with the justice system and the judiciary started to investigate the connections between mafia and politics around illegal waste trafficking.

You start this story with an encounter between you and a guy who was recently released from prison after serving a long sentence. You introduce this guy and then you tell us that he agrees to go undercover for you — and with you — as part of your journalistic project. Tell us about this guy. Who is he? What did he do? Why was he in prison?

His name is Nunzio Perrella. He was a former [crime] boss in Naples with the Perrella clan in this neighborhood called Rione Traiano. It was like a white collar crime. He was not involved in violent crimes — at least, this is what he said. He was never convicted for violent crimes. At a certain point he was arrested for cocaine drug trafficking. But then he started to collaborate with the justice system.

He told the judges about a new business that the Camorra Mafia — that is the name of the mafia in Naples — were involved in. Waste trafficking. For the judges this was a surprise. It was the first time someone had said that the Camorra was involved in the waste business.

He spent almost 20 years in jail and he denounced a lot of associates of his family and part of his family. When he was released, he was really upset because he also spoke about the politicians that were involved in this trafficking.

From his point of view, the police and the judges never persecuted the politician, but only the street guys that he was associated with. So the mafia, but not the politicians. He had a sort of mission to demonstrate what the reality was. So he wrote a book with a journalist. He wrote all the names of the politicians and the businessmen that were involved in the trafficking. But the book was not a big scandal. The publisher was small; the distribution was not so good.

“No one knew what we were doing — not the mafia, not the politicians. Only me and the newspaper’s director.”

At a certain point, I found this book. I saw a photo of him at the presentation of this book. He was wearing a mask. I wondered: why is he wearing a mask at his own book presentation? I was fascinated. I read the book and thought: Oh — this is a huge scandal!

This was a huge scandal, but no one was writing about it. I contacted the publisher and I asked for a meeting with him. And, and from that point, it started. It was a movie — really a movie. Even to meet the first time with him was very difficult. He lives on the run because there are a lot of mobsters that want to kill him. He lives in a hidden place in a hidden city. A few years after he got out of jail, someone put a bomb under his house. So he lives afraid of everyone and everything.

To meet him, the publisher sent me a location — a train station in a village in Italy. I went and there was no one. And at a certain point, they told me to answer a call. They gave me another address, in another city, another place. I went there. I did this in four different cities. Finally, I arrived in a bar and I met him for the first time. We started speaking. At the time he was 70 years old. He had spent most of his life in the mafia, and the rest of his life in jail with other mobsters.

We started to speak about how the mafia was involved in waste trafficking. In the beginning, I wanted to do an investigation about how the mafia was bringing waste from the south of Italy to the north. But he continued to talk about the involvement of the politicians. He would say, “The same politicians that were involved in the past are still in power. They are still running this business with the mafia.” Finally, I said, “Okay, let's do something about these politicians. Let's try to demonstrate the involvement of the politicians.”

I had already worked as an undercover reporter in the past. I did an investigation about the Catholic institution in Verona where priests were abusing deaf children from poor families. They had developed a system to protect the priests. They sent the Italian priests to Argentina to cover the abuse.

But the Italian judiciary never investigated. So I went undercover. I introduced myself as a former student of the institution to one of these priests that was accused in Italy. I spoke with him. After one hour, he started to to tell me everything, like how he abused the children and also how the system works. It was a huge scandal outside of Italy.

In Italy, no one wrote about this. But in Argentina and in Poland, all over the world, it was a huge scandal. So I was aware of the potential of undercover journalists, and I proposed to do an undercover investigation with him. I spoke with the newspaper I was working with. They approved the idea. It was very dangerous and legally also. They were very brave. But of course the most brave person was the former boss.

So he had a bit of a grudge because he felt like some of the people who were responsible for the waste corruption had never been held to account. And he participated with you or cooperated with you because he wanted to hold those people to account?

He had spoken about everything with the judges when he decided to collaborate with the justice system. He said the investigators persecuted only the mafia people, but not the politicians that were involved. He wanted to demonstrate how the system worked and also the fact that the politicians were involved in this trafficking. He also wanted to give back something he had stolen. At the end of his life, he wanted to do something for the good of society.

From my side, I wanted to understand how it was possible that all these industries were able to do these kinds of things. It's impossible that this kind of thing happened without the involvement of the politicians. I thought it was a huge opportunity to enter the room where these kind of deals happened. The idea was he would tell his former associates that he wanted to return to the business. That he wanted to meet with businessmen and the politicians that were doing these deals.

So…you've been meeting with this guy for several months by now in these clandestine ways. You're going from village to village. It's very cloak and dagger. Eventually you settle on this plan. How did you agree to work together? What were the terms of your arrangement?

He was super afraid to meet with me. The thing he was most afraid of was that I would denounce him or his family — that I was speaking with police or something. When he understood that my only intention was journalistic, he started to trust me. At the same time, I also started trusting him. We had to collaborate.

Usually, with this kind of investigation, you are a journalist. But in this case, I had to do a journalistic investigation with a former mafia boss — as an insider. I had to develop a journalistic approach that was very difficult.

At the same time, he had already collaborated with the justice system as an undercover source into drug trafficking. That is the only crime where in Italy where police can do undercover work. I think he was the best journalist I have ever worked with. After we finished the investigation, the judiciary opened an investigation. I had to provide all the footage and all the documents and everything because they wanted to understand what we were doing. It was a huge scandal in Italy. Even the methodology was new. After they studied all the footage, all the documentation, they wrote in the statement that Nunzio Perella was acting as an undercover journalist, a reporter.

So you start out and you get his cooperation. He agrees to re-enter the world that he has left behind, the world of corrupt politicians and waste management. He recontacts these people. Journalistically, how did you handle that? Were you in the room with him when he starts to reach out to these people? Was he wearing a hidden camera? How did you set up the reintroduction of him back into that world?

When we decided to do this, we decided to live together.

To live together?

Yeah. I took an Airbnb. We had to change apartments every two days, so as not to be in the same place for too much. Also he didn't want to show his documents. I had to book apartments. Sometimes, I had to book only one room, like for one person. And I had to sleep on the floor. The logistical part was a real mess. But journalistically what we did when we started to live together was crazy. My plan was to spend one week, ten days maximum, and do these things.

So he was friends with a lot of people. He was messaging and calling all these people, saying: “I'm still working.” The first day we received a phone call from a businessman that told us that this company had to dispose of this waste water. And they were looking for companies that could be friendly with them. I understood even from the first phone call that they wanted to receive bribes.

“The mafia is a mountain of shit. They destroyed our land, our country.”

This was months before the national election. The politicians that were at the top of these companies wanted money to start their political campaigns. Because we were living together — it was the first day — I heard that. I was recording. I was with the camera. When I heard these things, I thought, “Okay, this is bigger than I thought, this could be a huge scandal.”

We were speaking about millions of millions of Euros. What we said was, “Okay, let's meet in person.” What I really discovered was that in this kind of business, there are thousands of intermediaries. So we met with this middleman in Rome, in front of the Italian Parliament. We agreed to say that we were interested and we wanted to speak with the politicians involved in this — to understand what was going on.

In total, this investigation was six months. It was crazy because there were different people and different politicians and different mobs involved in the same deal.

Who are you pretending to be when you go with him into these meetings? Or were you not with him?

Basically, I was a driver. We had some meetings in the car, so I was present, and with some middlemen. But when we had to do meetings with huge politicians, I didn't show up. I was outside of the building. We were using hidden cameras and hidden audio recording equipment. I put two cameras, two audio recording devices, GPS. I didn't want to lose any second of the conversations. But I couldn't show up because, first of all, I'm not from Naples. I can't fake the accent. Most of the time they were speaking in dialect. Neapolitan. It’s another language. It's not Italian.

For the important meetings, he was alone or with other collaborators, like friends from the past, just to be more professional.

Did they know what he was doing? Did they know that he was being filmed?

No, no, no, no, no. Of course not. It was super secret. Me and the director of the newspaper were the only two people who knew what was going on.

This was just before the national elections. There were very important politicians involved. Even the son of the current governor of Campania — one of the biggest names in the democratic party. Rightwing politicians, leftwing politicians. All the parties were involved. One of the meeting we did was with the former Minister of Environment. So we are speaking about the highest level of the government. But no one knew what we were doing.

So you start to peel back the onion. The first politician goes along with it and agrees to do some something corrupt. What was that like when you start to see the first people participating in illegal stuff?

Basically, the public company had to dispose of this waste and they were in an emergency. Usually, you have to do a public tender and different companies can apply. When we met with these politicians in Naples, basically they said, “We want to give you this job” — it was around 10 million euros — “and in exchange, you have to give us 20 percent as a bribe.” This is the interesting part. We discovered that the Camorra was the only organization that could afford this price because they didn't have to legally dispose of the waste.

If you have to legally dispose the waste, you have to go to the dump. You have to pay a lot of money to do it the right way. But they could afford less money because they were just putting the waste in the ground or in the river.

The scandal was that they wanted the bribes because they wanted to support the political campaign of the candidates of that election.

So we recorded all these meetings. We published the story in seven episodes. The television published it in Italy. The scandal became like a national scoop. It became a political fight. When we published the story, the Neapolitan prosecutor opened an investigation. They arrested 17 people. They went to the offices and the houses of all the politicians involved. They took all their computer phones, documents, and so on. The story was published in 2018 and it’s still going on. It has never ended. They're still investigating these people.

You got a front row seat to this very basic corruption. You got to sort of see it up close in a way that most people don't, and you filmed it. What about that surprised you?

During those six months, we were doing so many things that I didn't have the possibility to think. My first goal was to survive and to not put the insider in danger. I was totally focused on logistical things. Then when we published the first story and I saw the reaction, I realized how big it was. In that moment, everything was crazy.

There are so many levels of things that I was experiencing. Like, for example, I really understood the mafia, the Camorra, for the first time. I grew up in a family of anti-mafia culture. They stole our future. They corrupted all the systems. The south of Italy didn't have the same development as other parts of the country because of the mafia.

They started a war against the state. They killed journalists. They killed politicians, teachers, and a lot of innocent people. We were afraid of everything. It really, really had an impact. In Italy, we say that the mafia is a “mountain of shit.” I grew up with this kind of education. When I was with this former boss, I was not undercover with him. I was myself, you know. My approach with him was: the mafia is a mountain of shit. You destroyed our land, our country. We fought every day about this.

You fought every day?

We spent Christmas together. We had time to get to know each other. We also became friends. I consider him a friend of mine. But at the same time, we were fighting every day because he was defending the mafia.

A lot of mobsters use this argument. They say, “We were poor, we didn't have any possibilities.” And actually, it's true. He had 12 brothers. He grew up in the poorest family. He started working when he was eight. He didn't do school and he's the smartest person I know, but he didn't have any sort of education.

So when someone arrived and said, “Do you want to make some money? You have to just bring this stuff to another place.” Of course. It was the only social elevator for hundreds of thousands of people in the cities of southern Italy. He blamed the state for not having done enough.

This is what every mobster says. But I can tell you a lot of poor families in the south of Italy, like my family, decided to get legal jobs, to suffer, to not do illegal stuff, to survive.

This is the other part of the reality. But during those months, I had to change my mind to understand, to try to understand.

He was a source, but he was also your journalistic partner in this project. It’s interesting how prolonged exposure to a source or somebody that you're dealing with in that context can change your mind, change the way maybe you see the world and vice versa. Did you change your mind about your previous way of thinking? Did he?

No, I still think that the mafia is a mountain of shit. But it really helped me to understand that there's no mafia without politicians. Otherwise it's only criminality. They were able to do this because the institutions were involved.

He helped me see things from this point of view. Journalistically it really helped me to understand how to do my job better.

He was not really aware of the consequence of the things he did, for the health of the people and so on. He really grew up with the mentality of, “I have to make money” I think it was the first time he started to think about the consequences of his actions.

What were the major hurdles doing this story? There were a couple of points in the video where you talk about certain days being very scary. It seemed like your lives were a little bit in danger.

Sometimes we went to a meeting and they checked his clothes, and the guy that checked his clothes had a gun. Another time we had to do a meeting with mobsters. They gave us an appointment under a bridge, one of the most dangerous areas of Naples. I followed him. They left him under the bridge where we we first met. Later, when I checked the camera, it was not working.

So we didn't have anything. We had to arrange another meeting. It happened again — the camera didn't work, the phones were in the bag, we're not recording the audio. They started to doubt about us. The third time we had to find a new excuse.

My insider solved the situation. When I watched the video, there were a few moments where things could have gone really bad.

What happened to your insider?

We decided not to expose him too much. In the end, he returned to his previous life, living on the run in a certain way. He lives in a hidden place. I'm in touch with him. The general public knows his name, but not his face.

We received a lot of support from the people. They immediately understood what we did. We received some criticism from journalists and of course, politicians. But the people understood immediately what we did.

One day, I would like to write a book. It was a life experience, not only an investigation experience, you know?

You should. I’m in awe of what you achieved. It's such an important lesson for journalists and for all of us. A very simple desire to understand the truth and to understand how things really work can lead to an incredible outcome.

Thank you.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.