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Confessions from a mafia traitor
Brut America
Follow
3/25/2025
He was a mafia boss, now he's hiding from his former associates. Brut. met with a former mobster from one of the world's most powerful criminal organizations: Italy's 'ndrangheta.
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Transcript
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00:00
But why didn't you ask your father to do this?
00:04
Because in drangas it's a given that when it's something like this,
00:08
an infamy, a betrayal, it's up to the closest relative to wash it.
00:12
It's like saying, if one of us betrays, he dies.
00:16
I'll kill him myself, because I'm the father.
00:18
Or I'll kill him myself, because I'm the son.
00:31
A bandit tries to kill you by making as little noise as possible.
00:35
But you can't exclude anything else.
00:38
They can try to make it an accident.
00:41
It would be preferable to have them found by the police.
00:44
We've seen it, but history teaches us that they can also kill you in the middle of the street.
00:49
It's not easy to survive.
00:51
You think I'm alive because they don't want to kill me?
01:01
The Androngheta crime syndicate.
01:03
The Androngheta is the homegrown mafia from Calabria, a region in southern Italy,
01:08
and the group that imports almost all of the cocaine consumed in Europe.
01:12
One of our reporters, Raphael Tressit, was able to meet with the former mob boss,
01:16
but on one condition.
01:18
The interview couldn't take place at his home,
01:20
so instead they met at a remote house in the countryside.
01:24
Obviously, he didn't want anyone to recognize him,
01:27
but he did give his last name, Bonaventura,
01:30
the same name as one of the most famous mafia clans in Italy.
01:41
I'm alive because I don't go out.
01:43
I live inside my house, thinking like an ex-Androngheta.
01:48
I try not to exist.
01:51
I try not to exist.
01:54
People don't see me. People don't know where I live.
01:57
People don't know anything about me.
02:03
My name is Luigi Bonaventura.
02:05
I was born in a family in Drangata called the Vrenna-Bonaventura family.
02:10
My grandfather was one of the most important bosses in Calabria.
02:17
When I was born, my family was already fighting a fight.
02:21
The fight was the Calabrian war, the war of Drangata.
02:25
It was a war until the death of one of the last men of one of the two families.
02:35
I had a very traumatic childhood,
02:38
made of violence, of a hard upbringing,
02:42
of indoctrination.
02:45
Actually, I was never a child,
02:48
so I was raised as a child soldier.
02:57
Can you explain how you grew up?
03:00
I was trained as a child, educated with Drangatist education,
03:04
as a child, to then kill.
03:07
Already as a child, they took you to slaughterhouses,
03:10
they showed you how they killed animals,
03:13
they made you drink blood, they made you eat raw meat,
03:16
they made you peel some animals, kill some animals,
03:19
and then they made you do domestic violence with death.
03:27
In a family in Drangata, when you are little,
03:30
it is consensual to have to deal with violence.
03:34
When I was little, my father and my uncles brought weapons home,
03:38
they assembled them, they disassembled them,
03:41
the game was to reassemble or disassemble them as soon as possible,
03:45
to clean them.
03:47
It was a game, it was fascinating.
03:50
It is not that I understood precisely that they were tools of death.
03:55
When later I understood that it was true that other children,
03:58
boys, played with weapons,
04:01
I understood the difference,
04:04
that their weapons were toy weapons,
04:07
mine were real weapons.
04:10
So I started shooting when I was little,
04:13
I started shooting in the air.
04:23
I would certainly have shot in some desolate countryside,
04:26
as a child, let's talk about a child,
04:29
but as I got older, between 12, 13, 14 years old,
04:32
we would go directly to isolated places
04:35
where we trained,
04:38
my father and my uncles taught us
04:41
to handle, to adopt more weapons.
04:49
What kind of weapons were they?
04:51
They were guns of various calibers,
04:54
of various brands, they were rifles.
04:57
There was the automatic rifle,
05:00
the machine gun, in short, there were various weapons.
05:08
So it has a shot, it has a way of holding it,
05:11
it has a way of taking aim,
05:14
in short, many techniques that you gradually make your own,
05:17
as if they had always been yours.
05:20
It was fascinating, however, you do not have the cognition
05:23
that then you will use the same weapons on people.
05:27
It was fascinating, however, you do not have the cognition
05:30
that then you will use the same weapons on people.
05:34
I was still a little boy,
05:37
I could have been 16 years old, I think,
05:40
16 years old or something,
05:43
the drangata was growing,
05:46
we are talking about a drangata that,
05:49
relatively recently, came out of the personal kidnapping period,
05:52
which then, by blocking the personal kidnappings,
05:55
went to other businesses, like cocaine.
05:58
From the 1970s to the 1990s,
06:01
the drangata was used by rich business leaders from the north of Italy,
06:04
but they changed strategy when they saw how lucrative the drug trade was,
06:07
so they started forming alliances with drug cartels from Latin America.
06:10
So they started forming alliances with drug cartels from Latin America.
06:13
Why did the drangata become the largest importer of cocaine in Europe?
06:16
Why did the drangata become the largest importer of cocaine in Europe?
06:19
Well, look, Dr. Tresa,
06:22
the drangata has the power
06:25
to distribute anything in any corner of the world.
06:28
That's why the cartels,
06:31
whether Brazilians, Colombians, Venezuelans, Bolivians or Mexicans,
06:34
prefer to have to do with the drangatists,
06:37
prefer to have to do with the drangatists,
06:40
because they are very mixed up in every continent.
06:43
The drangata pays,
06:46
and there is a low rate of injustice,
06:49
so it is the ideal partner for them.
06:52
The turnover of the drangata is just under 53 billion euros.
06:55
The turnover of the drangata is just under 53 billion euros.
06:58
To get to almost 53 billion euros,
07:01
you have to add the GDP of Paraguay,
07:04
the GDP of Bosnia and the GDP of Iceland.
07:07
Did a lot of things change?
07:10
Did a lot of money come in?
07:13
Yes, a lot has changed.
07:16
And here, however, there is an import,
07:19
a port of capital,
07:22
I mean, I found myself in a context of war.
07:25
So it was drangata against drangata,
07:28
family against family.
07:34
I know it's very complicated for you to talk about it,
07:37
but in the 90s you were forced to switch to arms,
07:40
but in the 90s you were forced to switch to arms,
07:43
to take care of a homicide situation.
07:46
Can you explain the situation to us?
07:49
I talked about the 90s,
07:52
about this mission,
07:55
where there was a part of the rival clans
07:58
that threatened the existence of our family,
08:01
also the physical iniquity of our family.
08:04
So our family decided to take action,
08:07
also because a few months earlier,
08:10
in August 1990,
08:13
they killed the son of one of our assistants.
08:16
So I started this action,
08:19
where the leader had to die.
08:22
At that time, he claimed to be the leader of the city of Crotone.
08:25
A double homicide happened yesterday in Crotone.
08:28
There would have been a second person
08:31
for whom the charge of double homicide was hypothesized.
08:35
My role was that of sentry,
08:38
of information postman
08:41
when the people who had to die were on the spot,
08:44
and also of support,
08:47
because they would have been able to escape.
08:50
But in reality, the command took action
08:53
and killed many people,
08:56
I don't know how many were injured.
08:59
Do you have blood on your hands?
09:02
Of course I have blood on my hands,
09:05
I'm not lying.
09:08
When I found myself in the homicide,
09:11
I didn't feel bad at all.
09:14
I had everything in my head,
09:17
everything was clear and precise.
09:20
But at the end of the day,
09:23
I didn't feel the situation
09:26
that I was in.
09:33
I was four years old,
09:36
I had become the leader of a very important family.
09:42
I married a woman
09:45
who didn't belong to my ethnic group.
09:48
And so, little by little,
09:51
they gave me the joy of living,
09:54
of living differently.
10:04
When I have two children,
10:07
I decide not to educate them.
10:10
I often walk down the corridor of the house
10:13
asking myself about the education
10:16
that I would have given them.
10:19
I often realized that even if I was violent,
10:22
I was preparing them for the education
10:25
belonging to that ethnic group.
10:28
Talking to my wife,
10:31
who was foreign to certain environments,
10:34
even if I had not told her
10:37
I had to take on my responsibilities.
10:43
In 2006, I told my father
10:46
what I had conceived,
10:49
that I wanted to make a difference
10:52
from that lifestyle, from that belonging.
10:55
He didn't tell me anything.
10:58
After that, the family got together
11:01
and decided to eliminate the problem
11:04
from my life.
11:09
On the evening of September 18th, 2006,
11:12
he and some other people
11:15
were shooting at me.
11:18
In the meantime,
11:21
my father had taken out a gun
11:24
and shot me 12 or 13 times.
11:30
So I responded to the fire
11:33
trying not to give him all the blood.
11:36
I tried to stay behind him
11:39
to give him less volume.
11:42
I thought I had to save myself
11:45
and neutralize him
11:48
trying not to kill him.
11:51
So I shot him in the legs
11:54
and in fact I wounded him in the groin.
11:57
When you see your father in front of you
12:00
what comes to your mind?
12:03
I was waiting for that moment
12:06
because it was 11 or 11.30 am
12:09
and I was under the house.
12:12
I didn't expect to be shot.
12:15
I was still hoping for my son.
12:18
The projectiles were aimed at me
12:21
and the ballistics found many projectiles
12:24
at the height of the man.
12:27
I managed to survive thanks to the training
12:30
that I had.
12:33
I was very lucky
12:36
because God was watching me.
12:39
Why didn't you ask your father to do this?
12:42
Because it's in the drag to touch
12:45
that when it's something like this
12:48
it's an infamy, a betrayal.
12:51
It's up to the closest relative to wash it.
12:54
If he dies, I'll kill him myself
12:57
because I'm his father
13:00
or I'll kill him because I'm his son.
13:03
It gives a sense of power.
13:06
After this episode
13:09
I suppose you never talked to each other
13:12
because what happened after this episode?
13:15
He was arrested for this attempted murder
13:18
and I decided to collaborate with the police.
13:24
In February 2007
13:27
I collaborated with the police.
13:30
It was unthinkable that my words
13:33
could come out of my mouth.
13:36
It's true that the day I made
13:39
the first verbal complaint
13:42
was three and a half years ago.
13:45
I didn't do anything else
13:48
but decide.
13:51
You have to structure it in a way
13:54
that is difficult to explain.
13:57
How many police officers did you collaborate with?
14:00
I gave my collaborative contribution
14:03
to 14 Italian police officers.
14:06
I contributed a minimum
14:09
to the arrest of more than 500 drug dealers.
14:16
I gave a mapping
14:20
of what is the Drangata
14:23
and what is its organigram.
14:26
I also gave my testimony
14:29
to the first drug dealer
14:32
of the Drangata
14:35
who is a drug dealer in Saudi Arabia.
14:44
I created a real gap in the wall of Ometa
14:48
in a vulgar and infamous way.
15:13
How do you live?
15:16
Are you forced to live hidden?
15:19
I am forced to live hidden.
15:22
I'm not a talker.
15:25
Today the mafias kill.
15:28
They kill the repentants.
15:31
But what can I do?
15:34
I have a relationship with death.
15:37
I have been taught to live with death since I was a child.
15:40
So I live with death.
15:43
I'm in debt with death.
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