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Milan, March 10 2023 – The degree prize in memory of Giorgio Ambrosoli for the 2022 edition was awarded to a researcher in Organized Crime Studies from the State University of Milan. The award, promoted by the Municipality of Milan every year since 1999, was awarded this morning from the councilor for Budget and Heritage, Emmanuel Conte, to Pierpaolo Farina, who completed his doctorate at the Department of International Legal and Historical-Political Studies of the Milanese university with a thesis entitled "Elective affinities - the relationship between the mafia and capitalism in Lombardy".

Present at the traditional ceremony, in the Clock Room of Palazzo Marino, Umberto Ambrosoli and Tiziano Barbetta, members of the judging commission, and the widow of the lawyer murdered in 1979.

"The candidate – we read in the motivation for the award – asked himself how and where it was possible that in a cutting-edge economic system like the Lombard one, which has roots in the values ​​of the Enlightenment of the Verri brothers and Cesare Beccaria, mafia organizations. The candidate answers this research question through a broad, compelling and in-depth historical analysis, starting from the eighteenth century up to the present day. The reader is thus led to understand how, in a healthy and rich social economic fabric of positive values, but there was also a potentially similar substratum of values, in whose humus some fractions of the Milanese and Lombard entrepreneurial and professional class were formed who allowed themselves to be infected by the mafia. It also emerges from the narrative that a strong and unanimous commitment was lacking of the democratic-republican soul of the Milanese bourgeoisie in the fight against the mafia and how such a commitment would allow it to finally get the better of it. The thesis deserves to be rewarded for the rigor, depth, clarity of the analyzes and for the convincing results it reaches."

"Today with this ceremony – said Conte – we send to the city a message of confidence in the value of our young people and, together, an invitation to make our own, in politics, at work, in civil life, that dedication to the common good, to legality and to justice, which represents one of the most significant and indelible aspects of Giorgio Ambrosoli's legacy".