Italian businessman denies mafia ties, claims mistaken identity in libel case against Arnold Cassola

A lawyer for Bruno Tucci, an Italian businessman who lives in Malta has denied any involvement in organised crime by his client, suggesting that his mention in the press was a case of mistaken identity.

This emerged during a sitting in the libel case filed by Tucci against Cassola over a MaltaToday article he had penned in July 2021 in which Arnold Cassola had asked whether the Maltese police had ever acted on suspicions about Tucci which he said, were first highlighted by an investigation by the Italian authorities.

Tucci took issue with the sentence where Cassola wrote “have the Maltese police acted on issues that have been long pointed out by the Italian investigators? For example, the Italian police have suspicions about a certain Bruno Tucci, a shareholder of Mbt Services, set up in 1996, and Genergia Ltd, set up in 2010, both based in Malta.” 

The article then moves on to describe a cocaine trafficking ring, owned by the Calabrian mafia, which Cassola said used a Balzan-based pharma company to operate.

During today’s sitting, Cassola exhibited a number of documents which he said had never been filed in court. Tucci’s defence objected, arguing that the documents had not been sworn and that there was nothing to prove their validity. The defence also suggested that this could be a case of mistaken identity.

Lawyer Philip Manduca, Cassola’s defence counsel, argued that the defence should have requested the expunging of the documents if mistaken identity was truly a factor

Tucci’s lawyer, Edward Gatt, said it was not true that Tucci had connections to the criminal underworld, arguing that he had a clean criminal record and never had any trouble with neither the Maltese police nor their Italian counterparts. Gatt also submitted that Cassola’s article had “clearly” been intended to needle Prime Minister Robert Abela.

Earlier in the sitting, Tucci had been cross-examined by Manduca, telling the court that although he had not paid much attention to the article, he wanted to say that contrary to the allegations made, he had never been investigated and had no criminal record.

When asked about the dossier compiled by the Neapolitan police, Tucci insisted that he had never been spoken to by the police, much less convicted. At this point he was shown a document, part of the dossier, and asked to check the first paragraph. The content of the document was not disclosed, but Tucci’s lawyer then suggested that it could be a case of mistaken identity. 

Tucci said he regularly travelled to and from Italy to see family and never had any problems or was spoken to by the police. 

Gatt told the court that this was not a run of the mill libel case involving politicians, but one involving an ordinary citizen. “To strengthen the content of his story, Cassola quoted reports from overseas to say that Tucci was associated with and involved in the Ndrangheta, actions which were causing great harm to my client.”

Cassola’s mistake had been to make the reports his own, without asking or communicating with Tucci, said the lawyer, going on to state that his client did not even have an idea as to what the Naples dossier contained.

“Everything points to this being a case of mistaken identity,” said the lawyer.

Manduca told the court that the intention behind the article was to criticise the Maltese State, and not Tucci. “There is only one sentence in the article which refers to Tucci and this is about suspicions by the Italian police about a connection to Malta. This sentence does no harm to Tucci.”

Quoting from case law, Cassola’s defence lawyer said that Tucci had admitted to owning these companies in Malta and that the evidence showed that there was enough to justify Cassola making a comment to the effect that he had a slight suspicion about Tucci, a comment which he was legally entitled to make.

“If this really is a case of mistaken identity then why file for libel?” asked the lawyer.

The case was adjourned to June for judgement to be delivered.