Minister Urged to Quit Over Alleged Link to Mafiosi Whose Threats Sent Writer Into Exile

The leader of the Italian opposition called yesterday for the resignation of a minister in Silvio Berlusconi's government after the publication of new accusations that he collaborated with mobsters whose death threats have driven the writer Roberto Saviano into exile.

Nicola Cosentino, a junior finance minister in the Berlusconi government who comes from the same town as Saviano, is also a senior official in Berlusconi's rightwing Freedom People movement and its chief organizer in Campania, the region around Naples.

He is under investigation by the anti-mafia branch of the city's prosecution service on the basis of evidence provided by a string of former mafiosi who have claimed he received money from, and supplied help to, the Casalese family of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra.

Saviano, whose book about the close-knit criminal network inspired the film Gomorra, revealed this week that he was fleeing abroad following reports that the Casalese family had drawn up plans to murder him by Christmas after repeatedly threatening his life.

Salman Rushdie, the British author put under a death sentence by Iranian religious leaders, said Saviano was in an even more perilous situation than he himself had been. In Paris for the presentation of his latest novel, Rushdie was quoted as saying the young author "must leave Italy. But he should choose his destination very carefully. The mafia poses a problem a good deal more serious than the one I had to cope with."

Saviano was last seen at the Frankfurt book fair where he met another writer under armed guard, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.

Saviano grew up on the Casalese clan's turf and much of his book is devoted to exposing its activities. Cosentino has repeatedly denied the allegations. He has also stressed the existence of testimony by another super-grass who has contradicted the evidence of one witness who accused him of mafia collusion.

After the publication by the news magazine L'Espresso of leaked statements from the latest and fifth former Mafioso to accuse him, he said: "I shall resign, not as a junior minister, but from politics, when just one of these allegations is proved."