Past Awards

I Edition - 2012

Premio Giorgio Ambrosoli
Mario Sarcinelli Former Deputy General of Banca d’Italia Former Deputy General Manager of the Bank of Italy during the term of office of Giorgio Ambrosoli

II Edition - 2013

Menzioni Speciali Giorgio Ambrosoli
Nino De Masi, entrepreneur from Gioia Tauro
Maria Carmela Lanzetta, former mayor of the city ofMonasterace
Mariangela Zaccaria, official of the Municipality of Milan, currently Deputy Secretary General of the Municipality of Milan

III Edition - 2014

Premio Giorgio Ambrosoli
Michele Liguori, member of the environmental police unit of Acerra, for having systematically denounced the role of the “ecomafia” through continuous investigations, reports and counter-measures in the territories of the Naples area, now the well-known "Land of Fires". In January 2014 he died of two incurable cancers. "A servant of the institutions", as the Head of State called him.
Giorgio Ambrosoli Special Mention
Michele De Luca, Scientist, Full Professor of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biosciences and Biotechnology University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, engaged in stem cell research, distinguished in the defence of scientific foundations and respect for the law in scientific research.
Simone Farina, Former football player, Aston Villa Community Coach who distinguished himself in 2011 for refusing a proposal of match-fixing and denouncing the ones involved.
Silvio Garattini, A scientist and founder of the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, he has distinguished himself in the defence of scientific foundations and respect for the law in scientific research.
Ambrogio Mauri, Entrepreneur of Desio, who for years opposed requests for bribes for the award of contracts.
Fabio Pisacane, Professional footballer, mentioned for having denounced in 2011 with Farina the football betting system.
Claudio Risicato, Entrepreneur of Catania and President of the anti-racket and anti-usury Association "Rocco Chinnici", distinguished for having refused for years to pay the lace (“pizzo”) and having promoted the legality within the business system.

IV Edition - 2015

Premio Giorgio Ambrosoli
Renata Fonte, City Councillor between 1982 and 1984 in the municipality of Nardò (Lecce) in Salento, although she had received serious intimidation and threats to allow illegal construction sites in the Park of "Porto Selvaggio" she did not permit it by applying the provisions of law for the protection of the park. She was assassinated on March 31, 1984.
Gaetano Saffioti, an entrepreneur in the earthmoving sector in Calabria, subjected to very serious threats and retaliation by organized crime. In 2002 he denounced the facts and became a witness to justice. He still works today under protection.
Sandro Donati, track and field coach in since the eighties, he has been active systematically, nationally and internationally, in denouncing the illegality in the world of sport. As a consultant for Wada (world anti-doping agency) he has significantly contributed to the fight against doping.

Giorgio Ambrosoli Special Mention
Alberto Lomeo, head physician at the Cannizzaro Hospital in Catania, in May 2010 he had been subjected to strong intimidation aimed at endorsing a diagnosis not in accordance with the results of clinical exams of a leading regional political figure. He resisted the pressure and did not change his opinion. Following his decision he was fired. In the ensuing court proceedings, he was acquitted and reinstated more than two years later.
Enrico Bini, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Reggio Emilia since 2010 he has denounced and acted to combat the problems of infiltration of organized crime into the productive and entrepreneurial fabric of the local territory, in a context of delegitimization and subject to strong opposing pressures. The investigations that allowed the arrests and judicial proceedings of 2014 against the 'Ndrangheta in the Reggio Emilia area.
Filippo Simeoni, An international cyclist, he found himself subjected to very strong intimidation and threats aimed at not denouncing widespread doping practices. In 2003 he denounced the facts, began to suffer serious retaliation and invitations to retract his positions, culminating in the episodes in which Lance Armstrong called him "absolute liar" and in a stage in the Tour de France in 2004 delegitimized him blatantly towards his fellow athletes. In 2008, at 37 years of age, he won the Italian championship: despite this, his team did not invited to participate to the 2009 "Giro d'Italia" .
Lance Armstrong was then found guilty of doping and all of his victories after 1998 have been revoked. He is now charged in various sports and civil trials.

V Edition - 2017

Premio Giorgio Ambrosoli
Giuseppe Antoci, public director
From 2013 President of Nebrodi Park (ME) and from 2014 Regional Coordinator of Federparchi the Federation of Italian Parks and Reserves. Advocate of the creation of the Protocol of Legality, for the protection and safeguarding of concessions of land of public bodies and the elimination of infiltration in the mafia procedures of entrustment of the same, which today has been extended to the whole of Sicily and signed by all the Prefects of the island.
Vincenzo Ciotola, head teacher
Dean of the Istituto Tecnico Informatico Galileo Ferraris in Scampia (NA), he has been working for years on the dissemination of the culture of legality with the 1,500 students.
In 2013 he created an extra-curricular course, organized in collaboration with the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), which included a theoretical and practical lesson of self-defence dedicated to all the students of the institute who requested it. A way to make them feel safer in general and in difficult contexts and situations, unfortunately more and more frequent especially in the area of Scampia, a territory recognized as difficult to manage due to the total lack of services to citizens and the presence of a high mafia presence.
Adriana Musella, Civil volunteering
President of the Anti-mafia Association "Riferimenti" of Reggio Calabria, she is the daughter of the entrepreneur Gennaro Musella, a victim of the mafia.
The association was created for a family memory to engage the same family in the testimony to civil society. It targets young people and wants to be an antidote against the cancer of civil society that is the Mafia.
Adriana Musella is the promoter of the Gerbera Gialla, the flower that symbolises the fight against the mafias. The Yellow Gerifer is the flower identified to symbolically represent the complex world of Anti-mafia culture. Its meaning is that of belonging to a world that resists the appeal of easy money and power over others.
Mariella Russo, head teacher
Maria Rosaria Russo is Director of the school Raffaele Piria Institute in Rosarno. She is in charge of the national school sector of the "National Anti-Mafia References Coordination Committee".

Special Prize
Pino Gusmaroli, Former consultant for Società Finanziaria Italiana (SFI), he has been called by Giorgio Ambrosoli, as an expert on the stock market, to form the team that will investigate the liquidation of Banca Privata Italiana di Sindona together with the lawyer Sinibaldo Tino and the professor Vittorio Coda.
Silvio Novembre, "Maresciallo della Guardia di Finanza"
He worked alongside Giorgio Ambrosoli and the Milan judiciary in the discovery of the bankruptcy of the BPI. Today, at 82 years of age, he is a witness to one of the darkest periods in the history of the Italian Republic, a memory and a living example of integrity, responsibility and professionalism to which the Award recognizes value and merit.

Giorgio Ambrosoli Special Mention
Salvatore Barbagallo, Entrepreneur, owner of a drilling company in Vibo Valentia.
On March 3, 2007, he denounced the Mancuso clan for racketeering. After many unpleasant vicissitudes following this courageous choice, he closed the company, in bankruptcy because of threats and mafia retaliation. Today he is a witness of justice in many trials against the N'drangheta, including the trial "Black Money".

Silvano Barco, Athlete
Former cross-country skier, he took part in the Winter Olympic Games in Calgary and two editions of the World Championships. At the end of his career, in 1996, he declared that he had resorted to self-emotransfusion at the study center of the University of Ferrara led by Francesco Conconi. He claims to have performed this doping practice until 1988 and to have refused to take erythropoietin (EPO) and was for this reason marginalized by the team.

Paolo Borrometi, Journalist
Journalist from Ragusa, collaborator of the Agi Agency, founder and director of the online newspaper "La spia". His inquiries have talked about the Municipality of Scicli, dissolved for the mafia, the racket of the funeral agencies, the stidda - a new mafia born in the area of Ragusa in the '80s - and have annoyed families of the place. This was followed by threats and heavy aggression, which caused him to have a permanent disability in his shoulder, even after his transfer to Rome.

Ilaria Capua, Scientist
Capua is one of the greatest Italian virologists. As a victim in 2014 of a legal case based on the infamous accusation of having spread strains of avian influenza to earn from the sale of vaccines, she asked for immediate resignation from her role as a parliamentarian to return to work in research as a director of a center in Orlando, Florida,
Emanuele Feltri,33 years old farmer from Catania.
As an agricultural expert, he chose to buy an old farm and become an entrepreneur in the organic sector. He engaged himself in the daily reporting of abuses related to his land, which sees hundreds of illegal landfills ruining the natural oasis created in 2009 in which he lives and works. Despite continuing to suffer intimidation, he struggles not to leave his land and his project.

Andrea Franzoso e Luigi Nocerino, As workers of Ferrovie Nord Milano, they reported through an internal audit serious irregularities in the management of reimbursement of expenses of executives. After the report to the police, Andrea Franzoso has been removed from his position while Luigi Nocerino, head of the audit, has been moved to another position. (Whistleblower)

European Award
Andrew Jennings, Scottish investigative journalist
He collaborated with the FBI and started the investigations that led to the scandal that involved the top management of FIFA leading to the fall of Blatter. He was already the author of a documentary in 1996 about corruption at Scotland Yard that the BBC refused to broadcast.
His book "Omertà", published in Italy by Rizzoli, is an endless sequence of crimes hidden for years by insurmountable walls erected maximum football organization.

VI Edition - 2018

Premio Giorgio Ambrosoli
Tina Martinez, She is the widow of Antonio Montinaro, head of the escort of Giovanni Falcone, who was killed on 23 May 1992 in the Capaci massacre. Mrs. Montinaro decided to stay in her city of Palermo, where she found the warmth, proximity and admiration of the people of Palermo. She has been traveling around Italy for the last 26 years, going to schools and taking part in meetings for legality, telling the story of her husband.

Nicola Pondrano e Bruno Pesce of Casale Monferrato.
They were the first to suspect that the deaths that occurred at Eternity were due to asbestos. Mr. Pondrano, former worker and union delegate in the factory and Mr. Pesce, at the time unionist and secretary of the Chamber of Labour of Casale Monferrato, investigated and fought to prove that the various deaths of colleagues and friends in the factory were due to the toxicity of asbestos dust. In 1992, Law no. 257 was conquered, which put an end to the "extraction, import, use and marketing of asbestos in Italy". This long struggle has been strongly and constantly participated by a large group of former Eternit employees. Today, Pondrano and Pesce are vice presidents of Afeva (Associazione Familiari e Vittime Amianto). With them on stage to receive the award Dr. Daniela Degiovanni, who fought with them day after day the mesiotelioma, a specific tumor caused by asbestos.

Donato Ungaro, Journalist and former city policeman in the Emilian town of Brescello, that is, until his inquiries did not become uncomfortable for the first citizen, who intended a disciplinary procedure against the agent, and then ended up removing him, firing him. In 2015, the Supreme Court confirmed the illegitimacy of the dismissal of Ungaro, due to the information that the administration of the country, in conjunction with mafia-type associations, did not want to be disclosed. Donato Ungaro did not abandon journalism, but flanked him with his work as a bus driver in Bologna for the company Tper, continuing to write in defense of legality in Emilia-Romagna.

Vincenzo Linarello. He was born in Locri, where, in the 90s, he founded the voluntary group Akatistos, which deals with pacifism, globalization and the fight against social exclusion. Collaborating with Monsignor Giancarlo Maria Bregantini, Linarello dedicated himself to the Calabrian unemployed, starting a real incubator ('97/'98) for the creation of social cooperatives and individual enterprises in the area. In 2003 he created the Cooperative Group Goel, a cultural project of change for Calabria. Goel is not a name chosen at random: it means the "redeemer". (In 2008 he was one of the promoters of the Alliance with Locride and Calabria, signed to date by more than 3000 people, 740 bodies and organizations, which aims to prevent the spread of 'ndrangheta and deviated Freemasonry.) His commitment is to demonstrate that the mafias are useless and unsuccessful, while ethics is effective and winning method not only in the moral field but also in the field of doing.

European Award

Iréne Frachon,A doctor from Brest's (France).
With her studies, she demonstrated the harmfulness of benfluorex and fenfluramine, substances contained in the drug Mediator (in Italy Mediaxal). However, bringing to light this discovery was not at all easy for her, since the drug in question was produced by Servier, a pharmaceutical company founded by Jacques Servier, a close friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2009, the drug was finally withdrawn from the market, but it was not specified why, nor its dangerousness. In 2010, Frachon published the book "Mediator, how many dead?", which was immediately withdrawn from the press (it will return to the bookstore afterwards), but which also caused the scandal that struck both Servier and the Sarkozy.

Special Mention Giorgio Ambrosoli

Marta Cabriolu, Mayor of the Sardinian municipality of Villacidro. During her mandate, she has been the subject of two serious intimidations, as well as of systematic and repeated local delegitimization in the press (also with references detrimental to her dignity as a person and as a woman), with related investigative activities. This is in the presence both of possible undeclared and illegitimate interests, and of serious risks of criminal associations aimed at disturbing and influencing the normal work of the local public administration as a whole, also of a mafia-like nature, since all the typological clues exist in this regard.

Antonio Cottone, President of Ape Confcommercio Palermo and owner of a pizzeria with his brothers Marcello and Roberto. Following an episode of great courage, which saw him oppose the action of two mafia and collaborate in the arrest of the same, presented to ask for the lace at his restaurant, Mr. Cottone has participated actively in the fight against mafia, becoming testimonial of the day of legality of Confcommercio: "Legality, I like!".

Giuliano Bastianello, Entrepreneur from Padua, active since 1984 in the field of supplies for Cultural Heritage. He has denounced several rigged contracts, attracting complaints for defamation and slander made by the people he identified as responsible. After 16 years and a dozen of trials he was acquitted for having told the truth. Expelled from his market, he resumed teaching art history by bringing his professional experience and ethical conduct to schools (Format "School of Corruption"). He is actively involved in projects for the introduction of methods of transparency and Civic Access in Public Administrations.

Cataldo Motta, Former Prosecutor of the DDA (Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia) of Lecce, which for years has fought strenuously in the anti-mafia division. His greatest successes in the anti-mafia division were the blows inflicted on the Sacra Corona Unita, the Salento mafia organization. The last operation he carried out before retirement led to 54 arrests of members of the same organization. This is only the latest of many satisfactory results that Dr. Motta has obtained during his career devoted to the fight against organized crime.

Giovanna Ceribelli, Accountant and hospital accountant, she launched the investigation into the tendering process in Lombardy's healthcare sector. Her tenacity in fighting illegality in public procurement, particularly in the health sector, led her to find out, by digging deep, several bids won illegally in the health sector. Ceribelli continues to work stubbornly as an auditor in hospitals to obtain honesty and transparency from both public procurement contractors, the hospitals, on the one hand, and the institutions, on the other.

Marilena Natale, A journalist, for over 20 years she has been courageously investigating corrupt politicians, rejections that have become business for the Camorra, cases of children who have died from hidden tumours, bad health, and much more. Her work has cost her the need for a personal escort, following the various threats received by the Casalese clan. However, she continues to fight the camorra with her inquiries, to defend her land from the mafia organization that is suffocating her.

Cooperativa “Valle del Marro”. Under the guidance of the parish priest of the cathedral of Polistena Don Pino De Masi with the "Policòro" Project, then in collaboration with LIBERA, it united the young Calabrians in their work and through work in the name of the anti-Mafia struggle. Since 2004 it has been operating as a Cooperative cultivating the agricultural land confiscated from the 'ndrangheta in the Gioia Tauro plain. Not with a few difficulties, the project continues, weaving the life paths of young people, who in the territories of Calabria struggle to affirm the culture of freedom of choice, work and life in their territories of origin, which is first of all cultural awareness. Today Valle del Marro - Libera Terra is the flagship of the region, a sign that it is not impossible to escape the mafias and start Calabria towards a different future. The President Domenico Fazzari receives the prize for Cooperative.

Claudio Di Sabatino, Angelo Volpe, Donato Antonicelli, Urban PoliceMEN of Pescara, they reported a case of abuse of office by the Praetor, who had committed a traffic offense, without paying any fine or tow truck. Instead of being heard, they had been subjected to disciplinary proceedings, then reported (and acquitted). After years, the administration has been sentenced to pay compensation to the three, for whom initially there seemed to be no chance of victory. Di Sabatino, Volpe and Antonicelli have demonstrated to respect the uniform with honor and honesty, even at the risk of their careers, in order to always achieve legality. For all.

Alberto Musy, City councillor in Turin.
Lawyer and Professor of Law at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Eastern Piedmont. In 2012 he was the victim of an armed ambush in front of his house, which cost him his life after 19 months of coma. Furchi was shot and was convicted for premeditated murder for abject reasons (there are three hypotheses of the magistrates). He was a candidate on the same list as Musy in the municipal elections. His wife Angelica Corporandi D'Auvare M