ABSTRACT
In short, the judges claim that Giulio Andreotti had an organic relationship with the leadership of Cosa Nostra for at least twenty years. He furnished the bosses with political and legal support, and the latter, in exchange, secured votes and power for his political faction. In the mid-1980s, with the victory of the Corleonesi family within Cosa Nostra, Andreotti's relations with the criminal organization became more difficult. A verdict which, according to Pino Arlacchi, "sanctioned the historic defeat of Cosa Nostra, Tommaso Buscetta's and the other pentiti's final reliability and the solidity of the judicial edifice constructed by Judge Giovanni Falcone and his collaborators". Moreover, the possibility, raised by the Giovanni Brusca affair, that Cosa Nostra is capable of defaming any politician, manipulating the pentiti can only undermine their credibility as reliable witnesses. In this they play the defense's game: Andreotti, as we have seen, has always claimed that he is the victim of a mafia plot.
