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AGAINST ECONOMIC CRIME
BRIGADIER GENERAL (RET.) ANGELO MATASSA
GRAZIE, PRESIDENTE O’DONNELL. BUONGIORNO A TUTTI E BENVENUTI ALLA MIA BELLA ITALIA. NOW IN ENGLISH: THANK YOU, PRESIDENT O’DONNELL. GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE AND WELCOME TO MY BEAUTIFUL ITALY AND THE ITALIAN PORTION OF THE PROGRAM.
I was born and raised in southern Italy, in the region of Calabria, which is the toe of Italy. I was there for the first twelve and a half years of my life before my family moved me to Canada. And so, when I return, and I return often, it’s not a visit for me; it’s a homecoming. I’m a proud Canadian but I’m even more proud of being Italian and I hope that your visit here has been memorable.
When President O’Donnell asked me to come to Rome and introduce our next speaker, retired Brigadier General Angelo Matassa, I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I first met General Matassa in 2012 when he was appointed attaché of the Guardia di Finanza at the Italian Embassy in Ottawa, Canada. Angelo became a fixture in the Italian community and immersed himself very quickly to the point that in 2017, when his term was up, he didn’t want to leave and most of us didn’t want him to leave. But diplomatic life being what it is, he returned to Rome and he and his wife Barbara, who is here with us today, live in Ostia, about a forty-minute drive to the west on the Mediterranean coast. Angelo comes back to Canada annually and has many friends and we love to see him all the time.
Angelo was born in Frosinone, a city about an hour south of Rome. He grad- uated from the University of Salerno, a city at the very southern end of the Amalfi Coast, a coast that I dared to drive last week. Mama Mia; what an experience that was. For those of you who’ve done it, you will know that it is both scary and an exhilarating experience. For those of you who hav- en’t, I urge you to do so, but it’s not for the faint of heart. At Salerno Uni- versity, Angelo obtained a law degree and subsequently, he went to Rome’s Tor Vergata University, where he obtained a degree in economic and finan- cial security. He joined the Guardia di Finanza in 1976. Now, the Guardia di Finanza (G. di F.) is the Italian Financial Police Force; the equivalent of the FBI in the U.S. and the RCMP in Canada. Angelo was with the G. di F. for over forty years and retired in 2017. He held many posts, including commander, serving at the border between Italy and Switzerland, instruc- tor, departmental head, and of course, diplomatic attaché. His duties in- cluded fighting economic and financial crime, as well as leading some very high-risk portfolios involving many national and international partners.
Pasquale Santini
Those investigations included operations in the areas of tax and financial fraud, serious crime, organized crime, money laundering, and proceeds of crime, cor- ruption and fraud and the management of public funds of both the Italian and European Union budgets, border security and customs fraud. He served in various professional capacities in Italy and abroad, spending almost ten years at the national headquarters here in Rome.
After his retirement from the G. di F., Angelo started a new career in consulting with the public sector on compliance is-
sues regarding the European Union Gen- eral Data Protection Regulations and he is currently a partner in a law firm that deals with privacy matters, as well as com- pliance and anti-corruption legislation.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a warm North American welcome to Retired Brigadier General Angelo Matassa [Gen. Matassa’s abridged remarks follow]:
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