Giuseppe De Masi, a businessman and symbol of the fight against the 'Ndrangheta, has died.

Giuseppe De Masi , a businessman and symbol of civil resistance against the 'Ndrangheta, has died. He spent long periods of his life under police protection after enduring a shocking number of threats and attacks. At ninety-two, worn down by a long illness and bearing the scars of a tormented but fully lived life, he was the father of Antonino De Masi , another anti-mafia businessman who continued his battles and who today is protected, like the rest of his family, by law enforcement and the Italian Army. Giuseppe De Masi leaves behind four other children—Michele, Sara, Caterina, and Graziella—and his wife Lina, all witnesses and survivors of a period of intimidation and attacks—as well as numerous grandchildren.

Who was Giuseppe De Masi?

Peppe De Masi was born in Cittanova, a small town in the Reggio Calabria area. A laborer, then an apprentice mechanic, between the late 1950s and early 1960s, he transformed a small workshop first into a farm machinery dealership, then into a beacon of a technological revolution in agriculture in Calabria and beyond. A visionary entrepreneur, his machines were eventually exported as far as the Middle East and across the Atlantic. He patented and built technologies that maximized the time, quantity, and quality of harvests, especially of fruit hanging from the trees, while protecting both the plants and the environment.

The closure due to mafia

Strictly committed to rules and contracts, he had an exceptionally close relationship with both his children and his employees, absorbed into the various companies that eventually formed a holding company. Peppe De Masi was always committed to networking with institutions and the healthy forces of the economy and civil society. He announced his decision by publicly exposing himself live on television from the TG2 studios after an attack that virtually destroyed one of his homes. It was 1990. His sensational denunciation of the clans of the Gioia Tauro plain prompted an immediate reaction from the Ministry of the Interior, and for the first time, he was placed under police protection, along with all his family members.

The reopening

De Masi, supported by his workers, reopened his company and, at the same time, requested and obtained the revocation of the protection order that prevented him from leading a normal life. Over the years, he consistently refused to pay the "pizzo" and assisted law enforcement in making arrests through the controlled delivery of money the clan intended to extort from him. He and his son Antonino returned to protection in 2013, when 47 Kalashnikov shots were fired at Global Repair, one of the De Masi group's companies located near the Gioia Tauro port area.

Weakened by age, he spent the last years of his life in Rizziconi, a town he never wanted to leave and which, despite the struggles and sometimes loneliness, he always loved deeply. His story has been told on several successful television programs and by some of the most prominent Italian and international journalists, as well as in the book "Inferi - The True Story of a Survivor of the 'Ndrangheta," the autobiography of his son Antonino, written in collaboration with journalist Pietro Comito and published by Compagnia Editoriale Aliberti last February. Giuseppe De Masi's funeral will be held tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 PM at the Casa di Nazareth in Contrada Badia in Rizziconi, where the chapel of rest will be set up from 9:00 AM that day.