Gianfranco Franciosi is one of the best motorboat mechanics in Europe and could fit a couple of engines onto a boat and make it travel at 90 miles per hour. This is what earned him the attention of European and South American drug smugglers.
When they called at his boatyard in Liguria on the north-west Italian coast asking for his services, he knew it would be hard to say no so he agreed and contacted the police and offered to work undercover for them as well. For three years, Franciosi, now aged 36, worked with the drug cartels, building and piloting boats packed with cocaine and weapons, unloading them off the Italian, French and Spanish coasts.
He has been called Italy’s Donnie Brasco, although he is not a police officer but now Franciosi has left the Italian government’s witness protection program, furious at their inability to help him live a normal life, out of the reach of the gangs that have vowed to kill him.
Franciosi would find bullets on his doorstep or on his car windscreen outside his protected accomodation. The acts of intimidation escalated when his boat yard near Genoa was burnt to the ground. He says his life has fallen apart since he became a protected witness and he has contemplated suicide. When asked if he would work with the police against the drug runners, he replies: “I’d never do what I did back in that cursed year, 2007.”
“Some people ask me why I am still alive. If they can find me, why wouldn’t they kill me? I don’t have an answer to that. A policeman once told me that they are trying to scare me to death. At least, for the moment. The drug cartels can ask anyone for a favor and knock me off. I already know that. I just hope that my time will come later rather than sooner.”
Gianfranco Franciosi, Rome, February 2015. Text by Lorenzo Tondo, Photo by Martina Cirese. Featured on Il Venerdì-La Repubblica, Time.com and Internazionale, 2014.
http://time.com/4098204/donnie-brasco-italy-mafia/