Giovanni Pandico

Giovanni Pandico (born June 24, 1944) is a former Italian Camorrista who was a member of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), a Camorra organization in Naples. Pandico rose to become one of Camorra boss, Raffaele Cutolo's underwriters within the organization. After twelve years of imprisonment, he decided to collaborate with Italian justice and subsequently became a pentito in 1983. Pandico's revelations brought a massive crackdown on the NCO and led to the arrests of over 856 NCO members and affiliates on June 17, 1983, a day labeled by the Neapolitan press as the black day of the NCO.

Biography

Early years Giovanni Pandico was born in Liveri (Naples), where his father was a lieutenant in the Italian army. Leaving Sassari shortly after the Second World War, his mother brought him to Liveri, a small town on the outskirts of Naples where his Greek grandfather had first taken up residence. During one of his first days on the witness stand, Pandico commented on his Greek roots: "My family has Greek origins and in Greek, Pandicos means the just man." By the age of 15, Pandico was already familiar with juvenile hall, having spent some years inside the Filangieri, the Neapolitan juvenile detention centre. At the age of 19, he was arrested for attempting to bomb the barracks of the Carabinieri and thus incarcerated in the infamous Poggioreale prison of Naples.

Career in the NCO In prison, Pandico increased his knowledge by voraciously reading written documents, particularly legal papers, and soon began helping other inmates in their dealing with the law. Thus, he soon developed a prodigious career in the mostly illiterate Neapolitan prison system. He was soon transferred to the prison of Porto Azzurro, where he was hired by the prison administration to help other inmates write personal letters, appeals to judges and other bureaucratic letters. Later, he was again transferred to the prison of Ascoli Piceno, which was a traditional stronghold of Raffaele Cutolo's NCO. He was moved to a cell next to Cutolo and assisted the crime boss in his daily routine, which included making coffee for him, serving food, but above all, he wrote letters on Cutolo's behalf, using a stamp with Cutolo's signature. Pandico soon proved to be one of the most important pentiti to ever be involved in the Maxi Trial against the NCO. He was the second senior member of the NCO to turn informant, the first being Pasquale Barra, who realizing that Cutolo was prepared to let him be killed, decided to reveal details of NCO murders in order to gain greater protection. A week after announcing his decision, he was flown via helicopter to the Neapolitan Operative Center of the Carabinieri, where his visit was eagerly awaited by the prosecuting attorneys, Lucio Di Pietro and Felice Di Persia.

By this time, Pandico also held his former boss and mentor, Raffaele Cutolo, responsible for his problems and the general situation. In an open letter to Cutolo which was published in a Naples daily paper, he said: "When you will be left alone, when all the camorristic people will have deserted you, you will take off your mask. Maybe only to breathe some fresh air. Otherwise you will end up choked by all these dead men who will scream at you: for what we have died?". Overall, more than 1,000 would later be indicted for the crime of association with a "Mafia-like organization" called "Nuova Camorra Organizzata". The resulting Maxi trials lasted three years and required the participation of nine different judges and scores of legal clerks, attorneys, witnesses and military policemen. After his first testimony, he had come to be perceived as the most reliable of the pentiti by both the press as well as law enforcement agencies. The Italian newspapers dubbed him "The Supercomputer", due to his extraordinary memory and were scrambling to cover the new wealth of information that he had produced in the courtroom. This claim was also made by Ağca himself in his trial. From his New York prison, Pazienza denied ever having visited Ağca.

In the first set of trials resulting from the 1983 crackdown, Pandico's testimony along with those of many other pentiti such as Pasquale Barra, Giovanni Melluso and Luigi Riccio were found reliable and convincing enough to become a significant factor in the convictions of more than 800 defendants.