On 16 October 2025, a rudimentary bomb exploded in front of the home of journalist Sigfrido Ranucci in Pomezia, near Rome, damaging the parked cars and the house gate, but without causing any injuries. Being the host of Report, the investigations initially focused on possible retaliation linked to the broadcast's investigations.
A first breakthrough in the case came at the end of June with the arrest of four people between the ages of 53 and 22. The four, with criminal records for drugs and one also for kidnapping, sexual violence, robbery and extortion, were believed to be the perpetrators of the commissioned attack.
At the beginning of July, the name of Valter Lavitola appeared in the investigation into the attack, investigated as the alleged instigator of the action together with another person. The police carried out a search of the entrepreneur and publisher, acquiring his PC and mobile phone. On 8 July Lavitola was interrogated, claiming to be a friend of Sigfrido Ranucci and professing his innocence regarding the attack. The same journalist initially defended the entrepreneur, confirming that they are very close friends almost "like brothers" and that Lavitola would never have harmed him or his family.
Following the news, some media reported details on the friendship between the two, also revealing a survey, financed by the entrepreneur, on how many would have voted for Ranucci in the political elections if he had run. The Report host confirmed that he knew about the poll, but without ever saying he wanted to run. Some media have begun to insinuate conjectures regarding the attack: this led the journalist to instruct his lawyer to denounce and sue for multi-aggravated defamation those who "have transformed, through explicit allusions, the victim of the serious attack into its presumed beneficiary, through expressions that affirm or suggest a 'fake attack' and other similar formulations and consequent advantages, the human and professional impact of which is of unprecedented gravity".
According to the Rome prosecutor's office, Lavitola instructed an employee of his restaurant, Clesio Tavares Gomes, 47 years old and of Cameroonian origins, to find someone capable of recovering explosives and detonating them outside Ranucci's house. Then he would have Gomes leave for Cameroon. The entrepreneur, however, had stated that Gomes was not in Cameroon because he had fled, but because he had to take care of his business there. Based on the signal from the two's cell phones, investigators discovered that Lavitola and Gomes were in the area of Ranucci's house a month before the attack, on September 15. According to the prosecutor's office, that would have been a sort of inspection to decide how to organize the attack. On this point, Lavitola replied by saying that it was normal that he was there, given his close relationship with Ranucci, and it was also normal that Gomes, his collaborator and factotum, was there.
On 10 August 2026 Valter Lavitola was arrested and taken to prison because he was accused of instigating the attack on Sigfrido Ranucci. The prosecutor's office also accused him of using the mafia method. An arrest warrant was also issued against the Cameroonian citizen Gomes Clesio Tavares, accused by Rome prosecutors of having participated in the project. According to the prosecution, Gomes was the intermediary between Lavitola and the gang - made up of four people - who actually carried out the bombing on 16 October last year in Pomezia, a town near Rome.
According to the prosecution, Lavitola is accused "of having conceived the criminal plan, giving Gomes the mandate to identify the subjects capable of finding the explosive and carrying out the demonstration attack in front of the journalist's villa". The investigators recall that the same entrepreneur would have "personally participated, together with the Cameroonian citizen, in a first exploratory inspection in Pomezia, 15 September last year". Gomes, for his part, would have "recruited and trained the material executors, the gang of four people of Campania origin and, in addition to having taken part in the inspection, he would have coordinated and participated in a second reconnaissance on the Lazio coast on 10 October 2025, making his father-in-law's car available to the command". The investigative findings "derive from the cross-analysis of the telephone and electronic records of the cells serving the area of the attack, from the tracing of the vehicles involved in the preparatory phases and from the forensic examination of the mobile phones used by the suspects, which disproved the attempts to pre-establish defensive alibis", concluded the Carabinieri in a note.
According to investigators, Valter Lavitola's objective was exclusively to "increase the journalist's popularity and accelerate the arrested man's projects" in the political sphere. The investigating judge of Rome, in the order with which he ordered prison for the 60-year-old of Campania origin, clarified that "if in fact the aim was to favor the political rise of the journalist Ranucci and evidently ensure for himself a leading role in the new hypothesized political scenario, there is no doubt that in the conception of the suspect, in the eyes of the victim and of public opinion the criminal event must have appeared as an intimidating or retaliatory act, in any case a warning addressed to the journalist to intimidate him with respect to the continuation of its investigations, but never to put the journalist's safety in actual danger."
According to investigators, Lavitola wanted Ranucci in politics to essentially become his spin doctor, his consultant. A project that the entrepreneur, owner of a fish restaurant in Rome, had revealed to the host of Report as early as 2024. In a chat from 2024, which emerged from the suspect's mobile phone, Lavitola, turning to Ranucci, allegedly told him: "In two years you will be President" of the Council, referring to the political elections and adding that, in the event that the journalist was sent away by Rai, he would "do bingo". These words would have been written precisely in the days in which the journalist felt under attack from politics, with his role as presenter put at risk.
Also in the order, the investigating judge reiterated that Sigfrido Ranucci had absolutely no knowledge of Lavitola's plan and the attack. "Several times" Valter Lavitola "commented" on the attack "saying that if he had been the instigator then it meant that Ranucci also agreed, when at present no element has emerged to believe that the journalist agreed with Lavitola". This is what we read in the text of the judge for preliminary investigations. According to the investigating judge, Ranucci was "the victim of the suspect's manipulation, due, on the one hand, to the latter's refined cunning, and on the other to the profound bond established between the two, so much so as to induce the offended person to have that reaction of amazement and disbelief as soon as he learned the news of his friend's indictment". In more than one wiretap, Lavitola's clear attempt to manipulate Ranucci emerged.
Then, on 12 August, during the preliminary interrogation, which took place in the Rebibbia prison and lasted over 5 hours, Valter Lavitola admitted "to being the instigator of the attack on Sigfrido Ranucci" as hypothesized by the Rome prosecutor's office. "He confirmed the accusatory hypothesis of the Public Prosecutor's Office by admitting that he was the instigator of the attack and says he did it to protect the safety of Ranucci who was the subject of several dangerous attempts to attack him and make him raise the escort", explained the lawyer Sergio Cola, defender of Valter Lavitola, at the end of the interrogation.
The investigations continued and, on 7 September, the hearing was held in front of the Review Court for Lavitola. The man reportedly declared: "There was a great friendship with Ranucci and I hoped that this relationship could also rehabilitate my figure with a social redemption for me".
Then, a few days later, on 10 September, the decision of the review judges arrived: Lavitola remains in prison, the defenders' request was rejected. The aggravating circumstance of the mafia method was also confirmed for him.
