Detained in Reggio for a couple of weeks – and exactly “from 4 to 20 July 2018” as he put in the minutes in the interrogation given on 30 October 2025 before the magistrates of the Reggio Prosecutor’s Office – the justice collaborator Mario Chindemi, a past participant in the ‘ndrine that operated in Gallico, recounts all the dynamics experienced in the “San Pietro” prison. Even when it was necessary to “delay” the transfer to other penitentiary institutions far from their families. For Mario Chindemi everything depended on the approval of the leaders of the Archi gangs, the same people who were in detention at that time, strengthening the accusation supported in the trial which is being held in Court against the former director, Maria Carmela Longo.
On the specific issue, Margherita Saccà declared to the public prosecutor: «Even the transfers to other prisons were coordinated by the gangs that commanded the prison and, therefore, on average they left more and more frequently from the southern section rather than the northern one, because they, I mean the members of the gangs, decided this way and obviously remained in the city prison» Adding: «The supplies of fruit for the prison were always carried out by the shops owned by the Teganos, both the shop located at the entrance to the Cep district located in the where once there was a butcher’s shop and the other shop was located at the entrance to the Cep district. And this happened from 2014 to 2016.”
The modus operandi
Favors for certain prisoners and rigor for those who did not enjoy the protection or benevolence of the clan leaders: at “San Pietro” there were in fact those who complained “of having been away from their family for months” and those who would have been able to intercede “with the director to prevent him from leaving the Reggio prison”.
Favors and privileges that have brought Dr. Longo to the dock and which will be up to the Court to establish their veracity. The contribution of the collaborator Mario Chindemi is full of episodes: «I remember in particular an episode in which a prisoner complained about the treatment I had received unlike him. First of all, I would like to point out that when I arrived in prison, or rather the next day, I met one of the leaders of the Tegano gang who told me that he had spoken to the director and had asked for special attention to be paid to me. In this regard, I linked the episode which concerns the fact of having received a bag from my wife which had not, in any way, been the object of the inspection, as the clothes looked like, and for this very reason she got angry because she said that instead her packages were always checked and the clothes put in disarray”. Another delicate episode dates back to 2017: «The Tegano top management was released from prison and they applied the obligation to sign, then he returned to prison, around the month of October, around mid-November he obtained authorization to carry out a specialist visit outside the Reggio Polyclinic on the fifth floor, and I went to see him having learned that he was in hospital and he told me that he had found a strategy to be able to leave prison for two days by ingesting a coffee bean. He himself specified that at the time he had some problems to resolve externally which he did not tell me because they concerned his ‘ndragheta group and that he had obtained this possibility from Longo. In fact, when I went to the hospital at ten o’clock on Sunday, he was there alone without guards or checks. I had learned that he was hospitalized and I was informed that he was hospitalized without supervision. Obviously neither I nor my nephew nor my brother who went to him had been authorized to speak with him.”