Italy police say businessman with ties to Berlusconi is mastermind behind journalist bomb attack

A businessman who had ties to former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi is the alleged mastermind behind an October bomb attack against one of the country’s leading investigative journalists, police said on Monday.

Rome’s Carabinieri police said they arrested Valter Lavitola for allegedly ordering the attack outside journalist Sigfrido Ranucci’s house last year. The two men are said to be friends.

The blast in a residential neighborhood of Pomezia, about 12 miles south of Rome, destroyed two cars belonging to Ranucci, known for investigations into corruption and the mafia. Ranucci had just returned home at the time, and his daughter had walked by a half-hour before, his employer said at the time.

Video shot by Ranucci, who has been under police protection since 2021 because of his hard-hitting investigations, showed the mangled remains of the cars and the gate.

Lavitola is accused of instructing a second man, Tavares Gomes Clesio, to recruit four men to place the bomb in front of Ranucci’s home, police said. The four men were arrested near Naples in June for carrying out the attack.

Police are still looking for Gomes.

According to police, Lavitola and Gomes took part in an “initial exploratory inspection” outside of Ranucci’s home in September.

Lavitola thought the bombing would raise Ranucci’s profile ahead of a possible career in politics, authorities wrote in the arrest warrant, according to local media.

Ranucci, the popular star of the weekly investigative show “Report” on state broadcaster Rai, is not accused of any wrongdoing and detectives believe he was unaware of Lavitola’s plans.

Ranucci has taken on sensitive topics such as Italy’s mafia and political corruption in past investigations, and has lived under police protection for years. He told the ANSA news agency the day after the attack that he had received “an endless list of threats.”

The journalist, who once described Lavitola as a “true friend,” was not injured in the attack.

Lavitola, a former journalist and import-export businessman who owns a restaurant in Rome, is well known in Italy, having been close to Berlusconi, who died in 2023.

In 2015, a lower court convicted the former prime minister of having bribed a senator, handing him a three-year sentence. The same sentence was given to Lavitola, whom prosecutors accused of having handed the cash to the lawmaker.

The explosion targeting Ranucci occurred on the eighth anniversary of the car bomb slaying of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who wrote extensively about suspected corruption in political and business circles.