Book Theft in Italy, With a Hint of Politics

(from The New York Times
from Rachel Donadio)

MILAN — For years, the books kept coming. A precious edition by Thomas More. Leather-bound volumes from the Italian Renaissance. Some stolen from the Baroque-era Girolamini Library in Naples, given as gifts to an influential longtime consigliere to former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
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Marcello Dell’Utri, a former senator in Italy, has been caught up in one of the biggest rare-book-theft scandals in history.
Now that consigliere, Marcello Dell’Utri, a former senator, has been caught up in one of the biggest book-theft scandals in history. In a rare interview here, Mr. Dell’Utri said that he had returned all but one of the books once he learned they were stolen. He also distanced himself from the central figure in the case, Marino Massimo De Caro, the former director of the library, now on trial in Naples on charges of masterminding the large-scale theft of volumes. Yet Mr. Dell’Utri acknowledged that he had received books from Mr. De Caro for years and had helped make his career.

When the arrests came, “for me it was a great surprise,” Mr. Dell’Utri said as he sat in a Prussian blue suit recently in the Via Senato Library, a private foundation he runs in Milan. “I repeat, until that point, I had told him, ‘My compliments, because you’re doing meritorious work for culture and for the country.’ ”

But the appointment of Mr. De Caro, a bibliophile with no college degree, to lead one of the country’s most important libraries would probably not have been possible without Mr. Dell’Utri’s support, and the relationship of the two men shows how closely politics and culture are intertwined in Italy.

“There are people like De Caro who steal,” said Fabrizio Govi, president of the Italian Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association. “There always have been in the world, there always will be. The question is how he got there.” Mr. Govi added, “How is it possible that a person of that kind manages to get into the graces of a ministry, to get a public position without a college degree?”

Mr. De Caro was sentenced to seven years’ house arrest for embezzlement at a different trial in March. He now stands trial with a dozen others on charges of criminal conspiracy. He was arrested in the spring of 2012, a year into his tenure as director of the Girolamini, after thousands of books were found in a storage unit in Verona traced to his associates, and still others were tracked to book dealers in Italy and elsewhere. During the first trial, Mr. De Caro said he had intended to sell the volumes to raise money to maintain the library, a state institution run by a religious order. Mr. Dell’Utri is under investigation in the Girolamini case, as well as in a separate case involving kickbacks in energy contracts in which Mr. De Caro also figures. But Mr. Dell’Utri has not been charged with a crime in those probes.

There is still a lilt of his native Palermo in Mr. Dell’Utri’s accent after even after he has spent decades in Milan in a career that has included directing the advertising company in Mr. Berlusconi’s media empire and founding the Forza Italia party in 1994 with Mr. Berlusconi and others. After more than 15 years as a lawmaker, Mr. Dell’Utri lost his senate seat this spring after an appeals court found him guilty of Mafia association. Italy’s highest court is soon expected to issue a final ruling in the case.

But while Mr. Dell’Utri, 72, is best known to Italians as a power broker who helped Mr. Berlusconi secure electoral victory in Sicily, he is also a bibliophile who founded an annual antique book fair in Milan and whose foundation has published scholarly editions of classics, including a 1993 edition of Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” with annotations by Napoleon and an introduction by Mr. Berlusconi.

Mr. Dell’Utri said that he and Mr. De Caro had been drawn together by their love of books. But he was also impressed with Mr. De Caro’s business savvy. (Mr. De Caro at one point worked as an adviser to a Russian energy tycoon.) In 2010, Mr. Dell’Utri recommended that the agriculture minister, Giancarlo Galan, hire Mr. De Caro as an adviser on renewable energy. In Italy, where connections often outweigh merit, Mr. Dell’Utri’s backing helped establish Mr. De Caro’s career. When Mr. Galan moved to the culture ministry, Mr. De Caro followed and went on to become director of the Girolamini.
Mr. Dell’Utri said he met Mr. De Caro “because he was a bookseller, as a rare bookseller,” adding: “He was very knowledgeable, especially as an expert in Galileo. He always invited me. ‘Come see, I’ll show you what I’m doing, an extraordinary work of restoration.’ And I said to him: ‘Bravo, Massimo, bravo. They should build a statue in the Girolamini Library, because you’re saving it.’ I was convinced that it was like that, you see?”

In the first trial, Mr. De Caro told prosecutors that he gave Mr. Dell’Utri several books from the Girolamini, including one by the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. Asked by prosecutors if Mr. Dell’Utri had been aware of their provenance, Mr. De Caro replied, “Yes.”

Mr. Dell’Utri denied this. “I rule out that I could have known this,” he said. “I exclude it in the most absolute way.”

Both the previous court sentence and testimony in the new trial in Naples make clear that Mr. De Caro was widely seen as protected by Mr. Dell’Utri’s support. He arrived at the Girolamini over the objections of officials in the culture ministry, and the library’s bylaws were changed to allow someone who is not a priest to become the director.

Mr. De Caro “was extremely well connected,” said Gian Antonio Stella, a journalist for the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera who has written extensively on the Girolamini case. “Of course, Dell’Utri was behind him.”

Mr. Dell’Utri dismissed this notion. “Everyone can think what he wants,” he said. “I know the truth.” Acknowledging that he recommended Mr. De Caro for the job with the agriculture ministry, Mr. Dell’Utri said, “After that, he did everything by himself.”

The investigation into the Girolamini theft is continuing. Mr. Dell’Utri said that storage space used by the Via Senato Library had been sequestered by authorities. “They’re examining all the books to see if there are books that come from this man,” he said of Mr. De Caro.

Mr. Dell’Utri said that the rare edition of Thomas More’s “Utopia,” the only Girolamini book from Mr. De Caro that he said he had not handed over to the authorities, might have wound up in this storage space because the library was downsizing for financial reasons. “It’s certainly in a part that was put in storage awaiting a move to a new space,” Mr. Dell’Utri added.

Since the 1990s, Mr. Dell’Utri’s foundation has published the Library of Utopia, an Italian series reissuing classics, including “Utopia,” Erasmus’ “In Praise of Folly,” Marx and Engels’s “The Communist Manifesto” and Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio.” (“That a puppet wants to become a man, a piece of wood, is the height of utopia, no?” Mr. Dell’Utri said with a laugh.)

Mr. Dell’Utri said he was pleased that Mr. De Caro was cooperating with prosecutors investigating the rare book market. But he also appeared to issue a warning. “If he says everything that he knows, I think he can help,” Mr. Dell’Utri said. “If he does it honestly, he would do well. If he does it like someone who turns state’s witness in order to have a reduced sentence, if he says falsities or accuses people, he does ill.”