Prosecutors search ex-police chief Gianni De Gennaro in Borsellino red diary probe

Searches in the Rome area

Carabinieri from the Ros unit executed six search warrants on Thursday, 12 November 2026, in the province of Rome. The warrants were issued by the Caltanissetta prosecutor's office, which is investigating the via D'Amelio massacre and the disappearance of judge Paolo Borsellino's red diary, the agenda rossa. The searches reached premises linked to former police chief Gianni De Gennaro and to repentant mafia informant Salvatore Contorno. Officers also searched premises linked to Donatella Peruzzi, Massimo Carnicelli, who handles De Gennaro's personal security, and Francesco Pacetto, a former police inspector.

The proceeding is against unknown persons and remains at the preliminary investigation stage. Prosecutor Salvatore De Luca, who coordinates the inquiry, said it seeks to establish possible responsibilities of people in institutional bodies who were superior to Arnaldo La Barbera, the former head of the Palermo Squadra Mobile. La Barbera died in 2002 and was already at the centre of earlier inquiries into the cover-up of the investigation.

Prosecutors' allegations against De Gennaro

The prosecutors' hypothesis is that De Gennaro, warned about certain details of the investigation, acted through Carnicelli and Pacetto to stop Contorno from making statements to the judicial authority. Prosecutors also allege that documentation was hidden through Peruzzi and moved to La Barbera's relatives after the September 2023 searches. In his note, De Luca describes De Gennaro as worried about the inquiry and about the cover-up trial still running at the Caltanissetta court. The prosecutor wrote:

“From the first checks, an apparently unjustified concern on the part of Gianni De Gennaro was recorded.”

The note also stresses that De Gennaro and the others are not under investigation for the crime of massacre, and that the searches were carried out in the proceeding against unknown persons for the attack on Borsellino.

The Contorno arrest and the Falcone letters

Prosecutors have re-examined events that courts had already settled. One is the arrest of Salvatore Contorno at San Nicola l'Arena in Palermo at dawn on 26 May 1989. The circumstances, they say, were never fully clarified by the Squadra Mobile that carried out the raid or by the State Police's Nucleo Centrale Anticrimine, which then handled the informant and was led by De Gennaro. The review also covers the 'corvo di Palermo', anonymous letters that discredited Giovanni Falcone. According to judicial documents, those letters encouraged the failed Addaura attack on Falcone a few days later. Prosecutors consider these episodes essential to reconstructing the 1992 attacks.

The missing bag and the Tinebra question

Prosecutors reconstructed the path of Borsellino's bag. It ended up in La Barbera's office shortly after the blast, with no report ever drawn up, and presumably remained there until early November 1992. Caltanissetta magistrates formally recorded it for the first time at that point. According to the prosecutors, the speed of the via D'Amelio massacre, the disappearance of the diary and La Barbera's narrow reading of the attacks, endorsed by then Caltanissetta chief prosecutor Giovanni Tinebra, were aimed at helping parties outside Cosa nostra. Il Giornale reports that magistrates assign La Barbera the direction of a cover-up built around the false informant Vincenzo Scarantino.

Background and open points

In September 2023, prosecutors searched the homes of La Barbera's family members while looking for the diary, and part of that probe became public at the time. The cover-up trial is still under way at the Caltanissetta court, according to the prosecutor's note. Pacetto's presumed service at the Dis, the Department of Information for Security, is listed as still to be verified. The articles do not say when the seized material will be examined or what further steps the proceeding will take.