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“Married to the Mob: The diamond boer and the honeytrap” – Louis Lieberman - Part 6

https://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-16-married-to-the-mob-the-diamond-boer-and-the-honeytrap/
16 Apr 2015

Open war

With the firing of Alberto from the concession 10 operation, it was soon open war between the Ferrante family and Liebenberg and, at the beginning of 2012, Pina’s and Liebenberg’s romance came to an end. But when Pina heard he was seeing other women, she convinced him she could not live without him, he claimed in an affidavit prepared for the tangled legal battle that would later follow.

On May 16 2012 Liebenberg agreed to let her visit him at the flat they had once shared, above the offices of their cutting shop in Johannesburg. The two had sex but, while Liebenberg showered, the police arrived. Pina had accused him of rape. “I was arrested and kept in jail for 11 days,” he said.

Liebenberg claims that, during that time, the Ferrantes took the diamonds and the written agreement on the real ownership of Liebenberg’s assets from the office’s safe. He was left with nothing and, at that point, he said, “they owned me”.

According to the affidavit, the Ferrantes also changed the registration numbers of all the cars that belonged to Liebenberg. “I had no control over my office, my papers, my videos,” he said. “I had filmed every meeting, but now I have no proof of anything; my computer is still there. And, in the meantime, they began selling all the assets.”

Liebenberg was found not guilty of rape. He claims that he was physically intimidated by Pina’s new man, the head of a private security firm in Pretoria.

In March 2013 Liebenberg decided to drag Pina into court to reclaim his assets. The legal battle is ongoing.

He reports he still receives death threats over the phone from people connected to the Ferrantes, who seem unperturbed by the Liebenberg lawsuit. The family’s business keeps on going, becoming more stable and profitable than ever, spreading over Zimbabwe, the DRC, Angola and Ghana – all of Africa’s most important diamond centres.

Both Pina and Salvatore Ferrante jnr refused to comment.

Silence has served the Mafia well in the past, but Messicati Vitale and the Ferrante family have a potentially huge headache: Palazzolo.

--Sicilian prosecutors consider the information locked in his head to be crucial, capable of implicating state officials and powerful business-people in Germany, Switzerland, the United States, and large swathes of the African continent where he worked his way to the top, acquiring political and economic power, in some cases at the very highest levels.--

In South Africa, Palazzolo could describe, if not the latest Mafia business ventures initiated since his arrest, then the structures and channels on which they were built.

Palazzolo is jailed under the infamous “41bis” regulations for Mafia bosses: isolated and alone in a cell of only a few square metres. He cannot correspond with the outside world and cannot receive visits. Even his “hour of air” is spent alone.

And this is how Palazzolo will face the next eight years – unless he talks. – Additional reporting by Khadija Sharife, Craig Shaw, John Grobler

This article draws on an investigation by the nonprofit Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) and the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), with the collaboration of the data analysts of Quattrogatti and with the support of German nonprofit investigative centre Correct!V. The project was made possible by the Innovation in Development Reporting Grant Programme operated by the European Journalism Centre, with financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [exposing their competition?] and a grant for investigative journalism from Journalism fund.