Italian police break up mafia loan shark ring

Rome - Italian police staged dozens of special raids to break up a mafia-linked loan shark network that targeted struggling businessmen, authorities said on Thursday.

More than 250 police carried out 70 raids and arrested 15 people in the northern city of Milan and surrounding towns, seizing €8-million (about R75-million) worth of assets, media quoted police as saying.

The gang was operated by the De Stefano family, part of the 'Ndrangheta criminal organisation based in Calabria in the south of the country.

The police action came after a two year investigation.

The De Stefano family, which has operated in the Milan area for 70 years, is accused of targeting struggling businessmen and acquiring property and companies using extorted funds.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1 ... 355C666017




Italy: Mafia suspects arrested over ex-mayor's murder

Riesi, 29 June (AKI) - Italian paramilitary police on the southern island of Sicily have arrested five suspected members of the mafia accused of murdering a local mayor 18 years ago. Vincenzo Napolitano, a former mayor in the western town of Riesi, was thought to have been allied with a rival crime family and was killed in front of the town hall in 1992.

The five suspects are alleged members of the Emmanuello and Cammarata crime families of the Sicilian mafia known as the Cosa Nostra.

They have been accused by anti-mafia investigators of killing Napolitano during a feud in which investigators say he took the side of the Riggio crime organisation, a rival clan.

Police arrested Pino and Vincenzo Cammarata, Davide Emmanuello, Salvatore Fiandaca and Nunzio Cascin on Monday.

Napolitano was mayor of Riesi - a town of 12,000 people in the western Sicilian interior 110 kilometres southeast of Palermo - between 1989 and 1991.

According to investigators, Napolitano helped two people associated with the Riggio mafia organisation avoid arrest and helped launder money made from companies involved in public works projects.
http://www.adnkronos.com/IGN/ext/printN ... .611854263





Italy: Dozens arrested in Naples anti-mafia raids

Naples, 30 June (AKI) - Police arrested 28 mafia suspects in raids on the outskirts of the southern Italian city of Naples on Wednesday. The suspects allegedly belong to the Formicola crime family and are accused of mafia association aimed at drugs trafficking.

The Naples mafia's Formicola clan controls the local cocaine, marijuana, crack and hashish markets, according to investigators.

The Formicola paid their 'affiliates' salaries and gave them public housing to live in after forcing the regular tenants to move out by threatening them, investigators said.

The clan operates in the northeast Naples suburb of San Giovanni a Teduccio.

Naples anti-mafia prosecutors ordered Wednesday's arrests.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Se ... .618287542

Italian police create profile of fugitive

ROME, July 1 (UPI) -- Italian police hunting a Mafia boss on the run since 1993 say they have reconstructed a genetic DNA profile of the fugitive.

The profile of Matteo Messina Denaro, the so-called Godfather of Trapani, was assembled from evidence, including hair, obtained from Denaro's brothers without their knowledge, ANSA reported Thursday.

The profile is considered a major breakthrough because the 47-year-old Denaro has never been arrested and fingerprints from his time in the military have long since been destroyed, ANSA said.

Denaro built his power base in western Sicily and, as head of the Cosa Nostra, is suspected of trying to expand his criminal empire abroad. Police say they've found evidence of trips to Austria, Greece, Spain and Tunisia.

Italian authorities have been conducting a "scorched earth" strategy for more than a year to try and flush Denaro out, arresting scores of his underlings and seizing million of euros in assets, ANSA reported.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Internation ... 278034328/

Italy: Assets worth €15mln seized from Calabrian mafia boss


Reggio Calabria, 6 July (AKI) - Anti-mafia police on Tuesday seized assets worth some 15 million euros from elderly Calabrian mafia boss Domenico Rugolo. The assets include 90,000 square metres of land, a building company, properties and olive groves, a luxury villa in the town of Palmi built illegally on a heritage site, warehouses and a bank account with over 90,000 euros deposited in it.

Rugolo's company seized by prosecutors, 'Innovazione Edilizia' is a building firm based in Taurianova.

Anti-mafia prosecutors also placed a five-year control order on 75-year-old Rugolo forbidding him leaving his home town.

Rugolo is currently under house arrest. The assets seized from him will be handled by a recently created agency based in the Calabrian capital, Reggio Calabria, investigators said.

Rugolo is believed to head the Mammoliti-Rugolo crime families. Investigators say the clan operates an extortion racket and launders its ill-gotten gains by acquiring stakes in building firms allocated public works projects and tenders to build shopping centres.

Rugolo appeared to own nothing as he assigned all his assets to fictitious individuals, notably Domenico Romeo, believed to be a false name for Rugolo's father-in-law.

The money laundering was carried out by Antonino Princi, who was killed in a mafia dynamite attack in April 2008 at the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Se ... .644654331

Mafia boss nabbed in Italy
July 08 2010 at 10:20AM

Rome - Italian police have arrested the head of one of the most powerful clans of the Camorra, the mafia syndicate operating in and around Naples, a statement said on Thursday.

Cesare Pagano, 42, was the head of the breakaway Amato-Pagano clan, "the most powerful of the ones operating in Naples' metropolitan area," police said in a statement.

"Also from the military point of view, the clan is the most dangerous," Vittorio Pisani, a local police chief told Italian television.

Pisani said Pagano was arrested in an early morning raid in his seaside villa. He had escaped arrest in 2009.

"The boss attempted to flee like he did last time," Pisani said, "but this time we had surrounded the area well".

The Amato-Pagano clan broke off from and then won a bloody war against the Di Lauro clan in 2004 and 2005, which left more than 60 dead.

Pagano was wanted for murder, mafia association and drug trafficking and was considered by police one of the 30 most dangerous wanted men in Italy.
- Sapa-AFP

Why cant they just leave the mafia alone.

Gotta love Pagano's Steve McQueen shirt.

Another Mafia Bust in Italy
July 19, 2010

Italian police busted a Sicilian Mafia drug ring operating in Peru and Colombia, making 13 arrests and seizing 20 kilogrammes (44 pounds) of high-quality cocaine overnight, a statement said Monday.

Among those arrested was the suspected kingpin, Paolo Messina, accused of operating in rare collaboration with the Naples-area crime syndicate the Camorra, the statement said.

Camorra clan leader Tommaso Iacomino, a fugitive in South America, allegedly negotiated with the head of Peruvian and Colombian drug cartels over the prices to be paid by Messina and his cohorts for the cocaine.

Italy is seeking the extradition of Iacomino, who has also allegedly sent large quantities of very pure cocaine to Sicily and northern Italy on his own account.

Police wiretaps determined that the drugs transited Spain, The Netherlands and other European countries through front import-export companies before reaching Italy.

Italy is among the top five European consumers of cocaine, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which reported a surge of 15 percent among young adults aged 15 to 34 in its annual report last year. - Sapa-AFP

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1 ... 307C352558

Mafia Money-Laundering Profits Swell in Credit Crisis
Bloomberg
July 21, 2010

The mafia has cranked up money laundering activities in Italy after the credit crunch prompted banks to stop lending, leaving a funding gap that criminal capital has filled, according to the Bank of Italy.

“The crisis has given organized crime room to thrive because access to credit has become more difficult,” said Anna Maria Tarantola, the central bank’s deputy general director, in a July 12 interview in her Rome office. “Whoever holds large amounts of cash, like crime groups, can make investments that aren’t possible for others. They can now invest in fully legal businesses.”

The central bank’s financial intelligence unit tracked 15,000 suspicious transactions in the first half of 2010, up 52 percent from a year earlier, and exceeding the total for all of 2008, said Tarantola, who’s in charge of banking oversight.

Money laundering occurs when criminals hide illegal income by funneling it through legitimate channels. Last year investigators seized Rome’s Café de Paris, famous for its appearance in Federico Fellini’s 1960 film “La Dolce Vita,” alleging it was owned by the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta mafia. Sicily’s Cosa Nostra mafia has used supermarket chains it owns for similar purposes, according to court reports in Palermo.

Smuggling Cocaine

Italy’s economy, Europe’s fourth biggest, shrank more than 5 percent last year and the central bank forecasts growth of 1 percent for 2010. Bank lending slowed in 2008 and 2009. Central bank Governor Mario Draghi said July 15 during a speech to Italy’s banking association that “demand for credit is increasing, but there’s the impression that for many businesses, especially the small ones, demand isn’t being fully satisfied.”

Organized crime groups boosted their revenue by 4 percent to 135 billion euros ($174.6 billion) last year, according to estimates from Rome-based anti-racketeering group SOS Impresa.

Mob arrests have underscored the growing role of the mafia and money laundering in the legal economy. A sweep against the ‘Ndrangheta, Italy’s wealthiest organized crime group, netted more than 300 suspects last week and showed how the organization has taken root around Milan, the country’s financial capital.

Today authorities sought 67 alleged ‘Ndrangheta members near Milan and in Calabria for drug trafficking, extortion and usury, and seized assets worth 250 million euros, according to an e-mailed statement from Italy’s finance police. Authorities consider the ‘Ndrangheta (pronounced en-DRANG-eta) to be Italy’s most dangerous mafia, surpassing Cosa Nostra, because of funds earned from smuggling cocaine into Europe from South America.

FastWeb, Sparkle

Investigators in Rome have accused managers at Telecom Italia Sparkle SpA and FastWeb SpA of running a 2 billion-euro tax fraud and money-laundering program from 2003 to 2007, according to a February arrest warrant. The companies, through their lawyers, said they were unknowingly involved in the scam and deny any wrongdoing.

The financial intelligence unit alerted police about suspicious operations involving Telecom Italia Sparkle and FastWeb, Giovanni Castaldi, head of the unit, said in the same July 12 interview.

Of the 21,000 suspicious reports in 2009, the central bank judged that 14,800 warranted further investigation and 4,000 were later labeled crimes and reported to prosecutors, Tarantola said. This is proof the Bank of Italy is spearheading the crackdown on money laundering, she said.

“More than 20 percent of the reports have led to criminal investigations,” Tarantola said.

Draghi urged senior bank executives last week to lead the fight against money laundering after inspections this year at 120 lenders in high-risk mafia areas showed that poor training and management led to inadequate communication of suspicious transactions.

Crime Hurts Growth

The International Monetary Fund estimates that money laundering amounts to an annualized 2 percent to 5 percent of the worldwide gross domestic product. Laundering in Italy may equal as much as 11 percent of GDP, according to former chief mafia prosecutor Pier Luigi Vigna.

The central bank is conducting its own studies to evaluate the scale of the problem in Italy, Tarantola said. Credit costs are higher and growth is lower in the southern regions of Italy, where organized crime is most prevalent.

“There’s a very strong correlation between economic growth and organized crime,” Tarantola said. “During the period 1983 to 2007, the five regions with the most mafia activity are the ones that had the lowest per capita growth.”

The financial intelligence unit has ordered banks to scrutinize withdrawals or deposits that involve 500-euro bills, Tarantola said.

Big Bills

Big bills facilitate money laundering since they make large sums of cash easier to hide and transport, the Bank of Italy said in a 15-page internal report last year. As much as 6 million euros can fit in an overnight bag, and 10 million euros in a 45-centimeter (18-inch) safe-deposit box, the document said. The Bank of Canada withdrew its 1,000-dollar ($961) bill in 2000 to fight organized crime and money laundering.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government passed a law last year granting amnesty to tax evaders who agreed to repatriate savings stashed abroad. That led to about 100 billion euros being declared to authorities and more than 5 billion euros in tax revenue.

Of the 206,000 transactions related to the amnesty, 340, or 0.2 percent of the total, have so far been flagged as “suspicious,” said Castaldi.

The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, set up in 1989 to fight money laundering, sent a letter to Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti in October expressing “concerns” about the amnesty. The task force drafted a new set of principles this year for countries passing tax amnesties.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-2 ... ering.html

Report: Italy's restaurants in grips of mafia's 'pasta connection'
EarthTimes
July 23, 2010

Rome - Almost a fifth of all restaurants in Rome and Milan have fallen into mafia hands, according to a report published Friday by one of Italy's main newspapers.

"It is the largest are staurant chain' in Italy, controlling at least 5,000 establishments, (employing) 16,000 people and with a turnover of more than a billion euros (1.28 billion dollars)," Rome-based daily La Repubblica said.

Besides the rich revenues that trendy establishments can generate, mafia interest is also fuelled by the opportunities for money-laundering, especially when false tax receipts are issued and payment transactions are done in cash rather than with credit cards which are traceable.

In some cases, restaurants have been taken over by loan-sharking mobsters after the original owners defaulted with debt repayments.

The report cited several well known police investigations undertaken in recent years, including one that revealed how the Cafe de Paris in Rome's glamorous Via Veneto was controlled by a crime family associated with the Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta.

But the involvement in the restaurant business of organised crime syndicates, mainly from southern Italy - including Sicily's Cosa Nostra and the Naples-centred Camorra - has spread throughout Italy, the report said.

"Some 15 per cent of the whole sector," has been subjected to some sort of mafia infiltration, Enzo Ciconte, the former president of a anti-crime watchdog, L'Osservatorio sulla Legalitata' told La Repubblica.

Besides the main cities, mob clans have gained control of eateries in some of Italy's most scenic and renowned holiday spots, such as Lake Garda.

The so-called "pasta connection" often makes use of front men, such as in the case of the Cafe de Paris, which was registered under the name of a barber from Calabria who, despite declaring an annual income of 15,000 euros, reportedly paid 2.2 million euros to purchase the restaurant.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news ... ction.html

Italy: Police have 46 arrest warrants in Anti-mafia operation


Bari, 28 July (AKI) - In an early morning operation on Tuesday, Italian police in Bari set out to arrest 46 suspected members of the what anti-mafia investigators consider the largest and fiercest mafia clan around the capital of the southern region of Bari.

Around 300 paramilitary police went about arresting alleged members of Bari's Strisciuglio crime clan that has been engaged in turf battles with other families for control of neighbourhoods around the city.

The Strisciuglio family has been trying to expand into Bari's outskirts while members of clan also carried on its fight with other groups while inside prison, according to investigators.

The suspects face charges of conspiracy to commit mafia crimes, drug trafficking, and a series of weapons infractions.


http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Se ... .747267648

Berlusconi Is No Mobster
Italy's prime minister has overseen the toughest crackdown on the mob in decades.
By GIULIO MEOTTI
July 30, 2010

Rumors have circulated for years about a kind of pact between the mafia and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, which guarantees him electoral support in the mob-controlled regions of southern Italy. And yet Mr. Berlusconi's government, now in its third term, has been conducting an impressive and extensive campaign against the mob. A recent string of successes includes the rolling up of hundreds of members of the 'Ndrangheta crime family. Not since the days of anti-mafia hero and magistrate Giovanni Falcone has the mob had it so tough.

Mr. Berlusconi has always dismissed the claims that he is linked to the mafia as "vile" nonsense. Those who are in the business of fighting the mafia know that the state has taken important steps toward its eradication: The most recent police operations and colossal seizures of mafia goods have delivered deadly blows. But, despite the facts, the chattering classes continue to generate an image of Mr. Berlusconi as a dangerous gangster.

On Dec. 31, 2009, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni declared "total war" against the mafia. Since then an average of eight criminals have been arrested every day. Some say a government initiative will only ever be able to deliver temporary setbacks to the mafia. Arresting a few gangsters is like cutting the head off a Hydra: Others will simply take their place. But a rogue's gallery of 21 out of Italy's 30 most-wanted gangsters have been arrested, among them convicted multiple-murderers who had been on the run for years.

Those arrested have included most of the remaining leaders of the Casalesi clan exposed in Roberto Saviano's notorious book "Gomorrah." The mobster Giuseppe Bastone was captured in a subterranean hideout. The No. 2 leader of Sicily's mafia, Domenico Raccuglia, who was nicknamed "the veterinarian" for his love of animals, was captured in 2009 after 15 years on the run. (He was subsequently condemned to life in jail for homicide, after dumping the teenage son of a mafia turncoat in acid.)

Last year, detectives also arrested 70 suspected members of the Casalesi, including the fugitive, Franco Letizia. And, in a pre-dawn raid on July 13, Italian police arrested another 300 members of the 'Ndrangheta mafia syndicate, including the man police have dubbed "godfather," Domenico Oppedisano. This is the largest crackdown on organized crime in the past 20 years. "If there is a government that, more than any other, has made fighting the mafia one of its clearest and coherent goals, it is my government," Mr. Berlusconi claims. He is never a humble speaker, but in this case the facts do indisputably back him up.

Mr. Berlusconi has also extended a controversial prison system for mafia members. Known as "41-bis," it enables the state to lock up dangerous bosses in maximum-security jails and complete isolation. The 41-bis regime was introduced in 1992 as a temporary measure designed to help cope with a national emergency. Until then, being in prison for the mafia bosses could be likened to staying in a hotel, from where they could continue to order killings and room-service. Now they live in small and dim cells, entirely cut off from the outside world. In 2002, Mr. Berlusconi made the measure a permanent fixture: "People have the right to not be afraid," he said.

The system is seen as so harsh that in 2007 a Los Angeles immigration court denied an extradition request from Italy for the gangster Rosario Gambino on the grounds that the 41-bis system was "inhumane" and "constitutes torture." The human-rights group Amnesty International has defined the 41-bis regime as "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment" for prisoners. A quite peculiar tool for a prime minister labeled as "friend of mobsters."

The Italian government has also made efforts to take on the mafia where it is arguably at its strongest—in its financial control. Italian crime groups have transformed themselves into global financial enterprises. The four distinct mafia "families"—Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the Camorra from Campania, the 'Ndragheta of Calabria and the lesser known Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia—dominate the economic life of one third of Italy. According to the Italian business association Confesercenti, the business of "Mafia, Inc." had revenue of €135 billion in 2009, reinforcing its position as the "first company of Italy." Italy's Eurispes Institute estimated that the 'Ndrangheta's turnover alone amounts to the equivalent of 2.9% of Italy's GDP.

Under Mr. Berlusconi, the dispossession of mafia funds has risen by 89% compared to the previous government. Police recently seized assets totaling some €1.4 billion just from the businessmen linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, who took over command of the Sicilian mob in the wake of the 2006 arrest of the "boss of bosses," Bernardo Provenzano. In total, €3.5 billion was seized in 2007, €4.5 billion in 2008 and €5.4 billion in 2009.

The seized money goes into a new fund called the Justice Fund, a tool that has been praised world-wide, from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to Israeli Minister of Justice Yaakov Neeman. The fund works to make the procedure of dispossession quicker and less bureaucratic, and the seized money is invested back into the repression on the mob. The mafia's funds are used in the battle against the mafia itself.

The battle that has played out in Sicily over the last 50 years shows that if the Italian state takes on the mafia with tenacity and seriousness, it can win. If we are to judge the Italian tragedy that is the history of the mafia by the facts, then Mr. Berlusconi is probably the greatest persecutor of the mob, in all its incarnations, in a long time. That's true even if he continues to joke about his mafia links: "Our interior minister is working well," he said recently, "but he has yet to capture me as a mobster."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj

Most-wanted Italian mafioso arrested in Belgium

Posted : Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:33:16 GMT
By : dpa
Category : Europe (World)
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Rome - Italy's interior minister praised Thursday the arrest in Belgium of a Neapolitan Camorra mobster who appears on the list of Italy's 100 most-wanted criminals.

The 58-year-old Vittorio Pirozzi was apprehended by Italian police and Interpol agents in an apartment in central Brussels.

"Vittorio Pirozzi's capture marks another great success by the State against the Camorra, one of the many that have been recently achieved," Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said.

Pirozzi, described in news reports as a top member of the Mariano Camorra family of Naples, had been on the run since 2003.

He now faces serving a 15-year jail sentence for drug trafficking, the reports said.

Organized crime exploits wind industry
Robin Pagnamenta - The Times
August 9, 2010

EUROPE'S booming wind energy industry is being exploited by criminals, according to Kroll, the corporate security group.

Criminals see an opportunity to tap into billions of euros' worth of European Union subsidies.

Organised groups linked to the Italian Mafia are among those to have infiltrated the industry, Jason Wright, senior director of Kroll's consulting group, told The Times.

While emphasising that the overwhelming majority of European wind projects were "entirely legitimate", he said that criminals were increasingly investing in the industry, both to qualify for subsidies and to launder profits from drug-running and other illegal activities.

Kroll, he added, was doing brisk business conducting due diligence on renewable energy projects on behalf of big banks and other potential investors.

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The American-owned Kroll has detected a sharp increase since 2007 in the number of cases involving fraud and corruption in the wind energy sector - chiefly in Italy and Spain but also in Bulgaria, Romania and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

"Renewable energy is completely dependent on subsidies, so it is clearly an area for corruption," Mr Wright said.

"Wind farms are a profitable way to make money because of the subsidies, and they are also a great way of laundering it."

He added that the wind energy industry was vulnerable because projects frequently hinged on the political patronage of local officials who grant licences and access to public land.

With more than €6 billion ($8.7bn) of EU subsidies having been earmarked for renewable energy projects over a 13-year period ending in 2013, Mr Wright said that the industry's growth in Italy had been much faster in Sicily and the south of the country than in the north - a reflection of the ease with which developers can secure licences.

Eight people in the Trapani area of western Sicily, as well as in Salerno in the southwest of the mainland, were arrested last year after an investigation by anti-Mafia magistrates into a string of wind projects.

Police in Trapani said that officials had been given bribes and luxury cars to encourage the town to invest in wind farms worth hundreds of millions of euros.

In another case, in Spain's Canary Islands, five local officials, a mayor and two developers were accused of bribery and misappropriation of land.

Another case in Corsica involved the skimming of more than €1.5 million worth of EU subsidies for wind energy projects.

Mr Wright said that he was not aware of any similar cases in the UK, where wind farms face rigorous planning scrutiny and often are rejected. He said they were very unusual elsewhere in Northern Europe.

"The vast majority of these projects are entirely legitimate but there is clearly a minority that are fraudulent ... We have seen a huge increase in the number of clients who have come to us with concerns."

It was extremely hard, he added, to determine the degree to which criminal activity had penetrated Europe's wind industry.

The president of the Italian National Wind Energy Association, Oreste Vigorito, was arrested last year and charged with fraud. He has not been convicted of an offence.

In Italy, there have been at least three police operations targeting the country's wind industry, one of which was given the codename "Gone with the Wind".

Christian Kjaer, chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association in Brussels, rejected the concerns. He said that reports of corruption in Italy were symptomatic of deep-rooted problems in the country's construction sector and not restricted to renewable energy projects.

Mr Wright said that about 50 per cent of the renewable energy cases that the corporate investigations group undertook on behalf of clients in Madrid and Milan uncovered evidence of fraud or corruption. This compared with an average of 10-20 per cent for most Kroll projects.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/busines ... 5902848269

Italy: Police arrest fugitive Camorra boss after car chase.


Naples, 12 August (AKI) - Italian police overnight arrested a fugitive Naples mafia boss, Alfredo Vigilia. Police managed to capture Vigilia, 43, in the southern town of Cetraro, after a dramatic car chase along the Calabrian coast and through the surrounding countryside.

Police also arrested two unnamed Neapolitans who are suspected of abetting Vigilia with "logistical support".

Vigilia is suspected of membership of a criminal organisation aimed at drugs trafficking between Naples and the popular Adriatic beach resort and Italian 'rave capital' of Rimini.

He also faces charges of illegal possession of firearms.

Vigilia is one of the alleged heads the Naples mafia or Camorra's Grimaldi clan. He went on the run on 19 May together with his father-in-law, 67-year-old Giovanni Grimaldi, and a third Camorra suspect, Francesco Vigilia.

Grimaldi and Vigilia were both arrested in July.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Se ... .814836710

$1.15b seized over Mafia links in Italy
AFP
August 14, 2010

Italian police on Saturday confiscated 800 million euros ($A1.15 billion) in cash and property belonging to a Mafia-linked businessman in Sicily, a statement from the Carabinieri paramilitary police said.

The money and property were frozen following the arrest of one of Sicily's most successful businessmen, Michele Aiello, 56, who has since been jailed for 15-and-a-half years for Mafia activities, fraud and corruption.

Aiello was notably involved in real estate and health care, and was linked to the Mafia group of former Cosa Nostra chief Bernardo Provenzano.

The businessman benefited from a "monopoly thanks to the support of leaders of the criminal organisation which also invested large sums of money in Michele Aiello's various activities", the police statement said.

The seized property included 250 million euros ($A357.83 million) from several bank accounts, an oncology centre in Palermo, six healthcare and eight public works businesses, as well as land, apartments and vehicles.

About 400 people employed by the seized businesses now pass into the hands of the National Agency for Seized and Confiscated Goods, which was set up at the start of the year.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-wo ... 124fa.html

Anti-Mafia, immigration successes
AFP
August 15, 2010

ROME - ITALIAN police have arrested almost 6,500 Mafia members, including 20 of the most dangerous, since Prime Minister Berlusconi took office in May 2008, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said on Sunday.

'Between May, 2008 and July 31, 2010, 6,483 Mafiosi were arrested, including 26 of the most dangerous fugitives. That's an average of eight Mafiosi a day and one super-fugitive a month,' Maroni told journalists in Palermo, Sicily.

He said that during the same period police confiscated or impounded goods and property worth a total of almost 15 billion euros (S$26 billion). 'These are significant results,' said Maroni, who is a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League led by Umerto Bossi.

Mr Maroni also highlighted what he said were good results against illegal immigration since a deal was signed with Tripoli two years ago to allow those trying to reach Italy by sea to be sent back to Libya.

'Between August 1, 2009 and July 31, 2010, (immigrant) arrivals by sea have been reduced by 88 percent compared to the previous (year's) period, dropping from 29,076 to 3,499,' Mr Maroni said.

Italian politicians, including the interior minister, and police rank and file traditionally meet to discuss law and order on the Roman Catholic feast of the Assumption on August 15.

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNew ... 66659.html

Italy: Mafia 'sent jailed bosses messages' via top soccer show


Palermo, 20 August (AKI) -The Italian mob has been using a popular soccer TV show to send encoded messages to jailed bosses, according to a top former national anti-mafia prosecutor. The messages appeared on a ticker at the bottom of the screen which broadcasts fans' text messages, Enzo Macri told the Italian parliament's anti-mafia commission.

Millions regularly watch Italian public TV channel Rai 2's 'Quelli che il Calcio,' programme. Aired on Sunday afternoons, it is presented by former Italian showgirl Simona Ventura (photo).

Macri' said the show's producers were unaware that their programme was being exploited by the mafia in this way.

There are some 600 mafia bosses in Italy who are currently receiving the so-called '41 bis' ultra restrictive treatment in maximum-security prisons. This includes solitary confinement, and a ban on money or parcels.

Italy's current anti-mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso reacted cautiously to Macri's allegations when contacted by Adnkronos.

"It's conceivable 'Quelli che il Calcio' could be being used to get round the 41 bis regime, but it's just a hypothesis," said Grasso.

"Mafia bosses being held under the 41 bis regime are not allowed to watch all TV programmes, so I am not sure if it is possible to send them coded SMS messages," he said.

Prisons are already on high alert to codes used by relations to communicate with jailed mafia bosses, such as hand gestures and other signals, Grasso said.

"To keep bosses incomunicado it is essential to deny them access to TV shows that air SMS messages from the public," Luigi Li Gotti, lawyer for several mafia turncoats including Tomaso Buscetta, told Adnkronos.

Italy's prison authorities alerted the national anti-mafia directorate to the suspected SMS scam when a relation of a jailed mafia boss wrote to him and mentioned texting 'Quelli che il Calcio', according to justice minister Angelino Alfano.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Cu ... .850235967