what doesn’t add up – Time

Rita Cavallaro

11 maggio 2024

There is another mystery over which the shadows are gathering, after the discovery of the “Passportopoli” at the Italian Consulate in Caracas. A story that has the contours of murder but which was archived as a natural death. That of the diplomatic official Mauro Monciatti, originally from Sinalunga, in the province of Siena, found lifeless in his home in the capital of Venezuela on 4 June 2016. According to Venezuelan investigators, the diplomat suffered a heart attack. The door of the house was closed, there were no signs of forced entry and the official was alone when he fell ill. According to investigations, the deep wound to the head was also caused by trauma due to the fall. The case, for the Venezuelan authorities, was closed.

But when Mauro’s body returned to Italy, the family immediately understood that more than one thing didn’t fit with the story of the heart attack. In addition to the deep wound on his head, Monciatti had bruises on his body. And his body “spoke”. Or rather, it was what was missing that had alarmed the widow Valentina Novikova and Mauro’s brother, Moreno. Monciatti’s body, after the autopsy which had established a heart attack as the cause, was returned without any organs, with the exception of the heart. The family, assisted by the lawyer Andrea Mugnai, had therefore turned to the Rome prosecutor’s office. «I am convinced it was murder, my husband was killed. All those marks they found on him, the blood you can see in the photos, his glasses gone,” he said. Mysteries that had deepened when the Monciattis’ lawyer had examined six USB sticks, which were in the official’s house in Caracas. Some files were apparently tampered with. A couple of days after his death. So much so that the Rome prosecutor Elisabetta Ceniccola, owner of the file, had ordered unrepeatable technical checks on the storage media, analyzed by the Ris carabinieri.

The magistrate had also ordered a new autopsy on Monciatti’s body, which led to a disturbing twist: the only organ returned and from which the cardiac arrest could have been detected, would have disappeared. This was confirmed by the lawyer Mugnai himself, who in 2018, faced with the dismissal of an investigation which remained without elements, announced the request to reopen the file and a request for an international letter rogatory for the transmission of all the documents. «That the cause of death is due to the presence of a third person in the apartment is confirmed by the investigation documents», say the family members, «and also by the content of a meeting between the former foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni with the equal rank Venezuelan”. Now that the spotlight has turned on the Consulate for the purchase and sale of citizenships, the widow could ask that the case be reopened and that justice be done for Mauro.