News from Italy

[Wiseguy]

Mafia blamed for using ‘weakened cement’ on Italy’s infrastructure
Tobias Jones, The Sun
August 17, 2018

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THIRTY-NINE dead, dozens missing and the rubble remnants of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa is a shocking reminder of how much grip the mafia has on Italy’s infrastructure.

Tuesday’s disaster was the tenth bridge to collapse in Italy in the last five years alone, and anti-Mafia campaigners in the country are warning that hundreds of schools, hospitals and airports may also be at risk of collapse, The Sun reports.

That’s because the Mafia saves money by using a cement which is “cut” with sand, vastly reducing its strength.

It’s called, in Italian, cemento depotenziato which translates as weakened cement. It’s like trying to put up shelves using sticky tape.

And that matters because Italy’s various mafias — Cosa Nostra (“our thing”) in Sicily, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Camorra in Naples — are all experts at winning building contracts.

And their hold doesn’t stop there.

Match-fixing and ticket sales in football, waste disposal agreements as well as drug and people smuggling have all been lucrative streams of income for the underworld gangs.

The system has been the same for decades: Politicians receive votes and kickbacks from criminal gangs who are awarded the contracts for huge construction projects.

Many people who have interfered in rigged tender processes have been killed.

Long gone are the Hollywood stereotypes of a thug with a Tommy gun and a trilby. Nowadays most Mafiosi wear suits and are indistinguishable from ordinary businessmen.

The only difference is the size of their empires.

IT TAKES A BRAVE PERSON TO POINT FINGER AT THE MAFIA

The scale of the corruption is so great that 281 town or city councils have been dissolved by Italian authorities since 1991 because of Mafia infiltration.

Often that infiltration only emerges after years of painstaking surveillance by the Italian police.

In each of those councils, hundreds of contracts had been awarded, not just for construction, but also for cleaning, rubbish collection, medical provision and park maintenance.

Construction appeals to the Mafia because the huge sums involved enable the laundering of dirty drug money.

The many subcontracts mean that a criminal gang can find itself hugely empowered, responsible for the hiring and firing of thousands of workers at a time when youth unemployment in Italy bounces around 30 per cent.

Costs are kept low, not just through the use of poor building materials, but also through strongarm management — unions are invariably excluded from work sites and safety inspectors intimidated or bought off.

It takes a brave person to point out the Mafia’s shoddy workmanship.

CAMOUFLAGED CORRUPTION

There are, experts say, many more councils where criminal infiltration still hasn’t been discovered.

Famous Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia once warned: “The Mafia doesn’t arise in the absence of the state, but inside it.”

One of the main advantages of infiltrating the construction industry is that it enables the Mafia to disguise itself as a legitimate, respectable business.

Since the mid-90s — when the Mafia planted bombs on the Italian mainland and blew up Sicilian investigators — it has deliberately pursued a strategy of invisibility.

As one of Italy’s anti-Mafia priests said recently: “The Mafia is very able to camouflage itself, to infiltrate into legal spaces.”

In 2010, anti-Mafia investigators confiscated €1.5 billion ($A2.35 billion) from Cosa Nostra’s current “don of dons”, the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro. Much of that figure was linked to construction firms.

A LONG LINE OF DISASTERS

Although it’s often the cause of disasters, the Mafia is also the beneficiary of them.

Each time a devastating earthquake hits the country, criminal gangs move in on the reconstruction efforts.

Franco Roberti, who was head of Italy’s anti-Mafia directorate for four years, told La Repubblica newspaper this week: “The risk of infiltration is always high. Post-earthquake reconstruction is a tasty morsel for criminal organisations and business interests.”

But the big worry now is that hundreds of structures throughout Italy could be at risk.

Legambiente, an anti-Mafia pressure group, has warned that weakened cement has been used at Trapani and Palermo airports in Sicily, as well as in schools, car parks, bridges and motorways throughout the peninsula.

Back in 2009, in a situation eerily similar to this week’s bridge collapse, 37 people lost their lives during flash floods in the Sicilian city of Messina.

Buildings simply collapsed in the rain because inadequate cement had been used in the construction of houses.

COUNTLESS MAFIA CASH-COWS

Construction is only one of the Mafia’s revenues streams.

Drug-dealing still represents a cash-cow, but in recent years criminal gangs have also made huge amounts from the exploitation of migrants. One wiretap from 2014 overheard a Rome Mafiosi saying to a colleague: “Do you have any idea how much one can earn through immigrants? Drug-trafficking yields less.”

Apart from drug and people-smuggling, the Mafia is also adept at siphoning off European Union funding.

The murder of the Slovakian journalist Ján Kuciak in February this year is believed to have been a professional hit carried out because he was investigating Italian businessmen from Calabria who were embezzling EU funds.

The other big earner for criminal gangs is waste disposal. Here, like construction, it’s easy to make money if corners are cut.

And through messing with rubbish collection — leaving it rotting on street corners at the height of the summer heat and the tourist season — organised criminals are able to hold cities hostage, making demands for contracts to be renegotiated.

FOOTBALL FOULED

Not even Italy’s favourite sport is immune from the Mafia.

Match fixing in football is frequent in Italy, especially in the lower leagues.

Every year or two, there’s a scandal when it emerges that betting syndicates have made huge profits after bribing players to throw games. The most recent case was in 2011, when dozens of teams and players colluded to arrange results, taking money from, and making it for, organised crime.

The Mafia has even attempted to muscle in on the huge money to be made from ticket sales.

In 2016, investigators in Turin discovered that the Calabrian Mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, was procuring free tickets from Juventus in order to sell them on at huge profits: ticket touting was estimated to yield €30,000 ($A47,000) on match day.

Ciccio Bucci, the man caught in the middle between Juventus and the Calabrian mafia, committed suicide in suspicious circumstances the day after being questioned by investigators.

After Tuesday’s tragedy, infrastructure is now at the top of the Italian political agenda.

If the taps are turned on again, you can be sure that the people who caused the problems will be offering, once again, to solve them.

https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/ma ... d9bf55e72a

[Strax]

Genoa bridge collapse: the mafia’s role

At least 43 people died, more than 600 were evacuated and 15 ended up in hospital in a critical condition, when a 200 metre portion of the A10 motorway bridge collapsed in Genoa, Northern Italy on August 14, 2018. The Italian government has declared a 12-month state of emergency in the region, with €28.5m (£25.5m) allocated to support those affected by the disaster.

Investigations into the collapse will look at different possible causes, including wear and tear, heavy traffic, structural flaws and other problems. The 51-year-old structure, known as “Italy’s Brooklyn Bridge”, was designed by Italian engineer Riccardo Morandi. It has been criticised by experts who have, at different times, called for serious maintenance and risk assessments to be performed. Commentators have argued that this disaster is going to be an Italian parable, a tragic illumination of the failure of a political system.

As the usual political inferno between parties and private firms rages on, the phantom threat of mafia involvement in Italian construction has resurfaced. The region of Liguria sadly scores quite high in the assessments of mafia infiltration. In the area, Calabrian mafia clans of the ‘ndrangheta – Italy’s most powerful mafia today – have heavily invested in the construction sector, in public tenders and in the exploitation of the port of Genoa and the roads to France and to the rest of the Italian north, for the purposes of illegal trafficking.

The ‘ndrangheta in Liguria is strong and well organised. And in the Genoa disaster, there are three potential issues linked to mafia activity. First, there are doubts over the quality of the materials used for the construction of the bridge. Back in the late 1960s, when the bridge was built, the ‘ndrangheta (among other criminal groups) was already present in the territory, and already investing in the construction sector.

Corruption in construction

Since then, construction has become the core business of the Calabrian clans in Liguria, and in Genoa as well – a fact confirmed by anti-mafia prosecutors in one of the most recent investigations in the region, called Operation La Svolta (“the turning point”), which ran from 2014 to 2016.

There is no evidence that Società Italiana Condotte D’Acqua Spa - a construction group based in Rome, which built the Morandi bridge and coordinates construction and maintenance of several roads and railways across Italy - used sub-standard materials, or was mafia-infiltrated at the time when the bridge was built. But future investigations will seek to understand whether some of the maintenance works on the motorway and the bridge were assigned to disreputable contractors and sub-contractors.

Yet further anti-mafia operations have given cause for concern; specifically Operation Bellu Lavuru in 2012, which led to trials against members of the ‘ndrangheta involved in construction of an important road in Calabria. The operation also established recent and problematic connections between some managers of Società Italiana Condotte D’Acqua Spa and clans of the ‘ndrangheta, during the construction of roads.

Società Italiana Condotte D’Acqua Spa holds 31% of the association of companies managing the construction of the Terzo Valico – a high-speed railway service between Genoa and Milan, aimed at improving movements between the port of Genoa and the railways of northern Italy and the rest of Europe.

Arrests were made in connection with the Terzo Valico project, because of ‘ndrangheta clans’ alleged influence over sub-contracts in Liguria in 2016. And in March 2018, the president of the Società Italiana Condotte D’Acqua Spa was also arrested on a charge of corruption. He remains under house arrest, awaiting trial in November this year, and has since stepped down as president of Società Italiana Condotte D’Acqua Spa, which went into receivership at the beginning of August 2018.

The emergency business

Large-scale disasters can also present the mafia with opportunities to profit from crises and states of emergency: this is known in Italy as “the emergency business”. Over the past few decades, for example, mafia groups have frequently been involved in reconstruction.

When the government declares a state of emergency, it typically allocates extra funds to support the people and places affected. But in order to speed up relief efforts, the control mechanisms for reviewing bids for public contracts can be lax, which opens the door for mafia groups to become involved in the process. The mafia has also infiltrated relief systems and support funds linked, for example, to migration centres.

Given that the region of Liguria, and the city of Genoa itself, have already experienced the interference of mafia-run businesses in construction, there’s a high risk of mafia involvement in relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of the Genoa bridge collapse.

As is often the case in Italy, blaming mafia infiltration for the failure of the system poses very difficult questions related not just to crime, but also to accountability, transparency, ethics and corruption in politics. Of course, it’s easy to insinuate that the mafia contributes to risks in Italian infrastructure. But these claims are difficult to prove, and can be leveraged for sensationalist speculation and political propaganda. Nevertheless, history teaches us that the influence of the mafia must be considered when trying to make sense of disasters in the region.

Source: https://theconversation.com/genoa-bridg ... ole-101747

[SonnyBlackstein]

“In 2010, anti-Mafia investigators confiscated €1.5 billion from Cosa Nostra’s current “don of dons”, the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro”

Holy fuck. And that’s only the money they found.

Monies worth nothing if you can’t spend it though.

[Strax]

“In 2010, anti-Mafia investigators confiscated €1.5 billion from Cosa Nostra’s current “don of dons”, the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro”

Holy fuck. And that’s only the money they found.

Monies worth nothing if you can’t spend it though.

In January 2010, police seized construction companies, villas, shops and vehicles worth some 550 million euros from a western Sicilian construction magnate, Rosario Cascio, believed to be one of the main bankrollers and money launderers for Messina Denaro. Together with 700 million euros in assets taken from supermarket magnate Giuseppe Grigoli at the end of 2008 and 200 million euros from construction tycoon Francesco Pecora in November 2009.

In September 2010, police seized a record amount of assets worth 1.5 billion euros from a Sicilian businessman Vito Nicastri accused of working with Messina Denaro. He had invested in wind and solar energy sources, as a way of laundering money.

[Strax]

Vito Nicastri was arrested again this year, he was meeting with Antonino D'Ali J.He has been Senator from 1994 to 2018 , as well as Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of the Interior and president of the Province of Trapani . Antonio D'Alì Sr. was founder of biggest private bank in Sicily (Banco Sicula), his cousin Giacomo D’Alì is a counsellor of the Banca Commerciale Italiana in Milan, they were also members of P2.

[SonnyBlackstein]

“In 2010, anti-Mafia investigators confiscated €1.5 billion from Cosa Nostra’s current “don of dons”, the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro”

Holy fuck. And that’s only the money they found.

Monies worth nothing if you can’t spend it though.

In January 2010, police seized construction companies, villas, shops and vehicles worth some 550 million euros from a western Sicilian construction magnate, Rosario Cascio, believed to be one of the main bankrollers and money launderers for Messina Denaro. Together with 700 million euros in assets taken from supermarket magnate Giuseppe Grigoli at the end of 2008 and 200 million euros from construction tycoon Francesco Pecora in November 2009.

In September 2010, police seized a record amount of assets worth 1.5 billion euros from a Sicilian businessman Vito Nicastri accused of working with Messina Denaro. He had invested in wind and solar energy sources, as a way of laundering money.

Makes their US counterparts pale in comparison

[aleksandrored]

28 August 2018 - Mafia in Paternò, from extortion to the "bow" to the boss: 9 arrests, shot to the Clan Assinnata

Nine presumed belonging to a cosca of Paternò were arrested by the carabinieri for association mafia type, trafficking and drug dealing, attempted murder and extortion with the aggravating of the Mafia method.

The investigations made it possible to define the position of command of the Assinnata clan of organized crime in the country, also highlighted by the sign of reverence of the 'bow' during the patronal celebrations of December 2015.

The investigators, after the investigative activities that led to the capture in February 2016 of the The End operation of 14 presumed exponents of the same criminal group, have identified heads and followers, experiencing a widespread conditioning of the local economy. In handcuffs also the alleged regent of the clan who, in place of the detained father, according to the investigations, he was in charge of relations with other prominent members of the mafia.

There are ten people, two of whom are already detained, reached by the restraining order issued by the investigating magistrate of Catania at the request of the local public prosecutor's office of Paternò against the Assinnata clan, considered territorial division of the 'Santapaola family.

Among them Domenico Assinnata, 28, already in prison, son of the mafia boss Salvatore, who would take the reins of the group holding direct relations with leading figures of the Catania mafia. The other recipients of the measure are: Erminio Laudani, 49 years old; Gaetano Laudani, of 21; Marco Impellizzeri, of 25; Samuele Cannavò, of 21, already detained in Syracuse; Marco Giuseppe Sciacca, of 24; Cristian Terranova, of 26; Ivan Gianfranco Scuderi, of 24; Salvatore Alex Atanasio, of 26; and Rosario Sammartino, of 39.

The operation, defined as 'Assault', according to the Catania Public Prosecutor's Office, has "defined the position of dominance of the Assinnata family in the context of local organized crime, highlighted by the reverence sign given during the patronal celebrations of 02 December 2015, with classic swinging and «Inchino» of the bearers in front of the house of the historic boss Salvatore Assinnata, father of Domenico ». He reconstructed the "volume of illegal business of the clan in the sector of extortion of entrepreneurs in the area of ​​reference, in particular against a car rental company victim of two separate acts of intimidation. On the first occasion, the car owned by the owner was burnt, while in the second the window and the entrance door of the company were shattered, even though they were shatterproof ». Clarify the dynamics of the organization of the "shopping plazas", from the channels to the procurement and sale of heroin, marijuana and hashish procedures. During the investigations, 12 carabinieri of the Paternò company were arrested as drug dealers.

[maxiestern11]

There are 2 people that I’m curious to investigate but don’t know how to get inf on them. They are George Colleti (or Colletti) and James Cororella. They live on E.14 St., and E.13 St., in NYC off First Ave downtown. They were charged and acquitted in a homicide in Elizebeth NJ back in 1923 I believe. The murder victim being one Pietrino Caiozzo. He was shot 6 times....I believe this murder ties in with the larger Castellammrese conflict between the Buccellatto clan and the Magaddino/Bonanno clan for supremacy in America. It was a vendetta carried over from Sicily resulting in many killing both there and America. If any body specializes in early history I think this would open a wealth of additional information. This was not a singular isolated incident but rather tied into almost all early history/development of the later groups in USA that developed. The Good Killers, etc. I appreciate any help given.

[aleksandrored]

19 September 2018 - The mafia's business with drugs in Catania, blitz with 8 arrests

At the house arrest in via Santa Maria delle Salette he would organize the group's meetings to organize the traffics of the San Cristoforo district shopping mall in Catania. This is the home of Salvatore Panassiti who would also take care of the passage of money, drugs and documents.

The carabinieri of the provincial command of Catania have executed, in the provinces of Catania, Palermo and Siracusa, an order of custody in custody against eight people for association for the possession and trafficking of drugs, with the aggravating circumstance of the traceability to the Cappello-Bonaccorsi clan and in particular to the group of the boss Salvatore Massimiliano Salvo. The order was issued by the investigating judge of the court of Catania, at the request of this Prosecutor's Office - District Anti-Mafia Directorate.

All the arrested are residents in Catania, in the popular district of San Cristoforo. This is Carmelo Andrea Musumeci, 36, Santo la Ferlita, 29, Giovanna Carmelina Bartolotta, 49, Giovanni Geraci, 39, Salvatore Panassiti, 34, Gaetano Lauceri, 29, Maurizio Barone , 36, Carmelo Pulvirenti, 47 years old.

The investigations revealed that the organization would have Giovanni Geraci as its representative. To collaborate with him the young Panassiti home detainee who made available his house, which has become an important logistic reference point for group meetings

The investigations were initiated after the discovery of cocaine, money and a ledger at Panassiti's home containing notes related to the management of money flows and the distribution of drugs in the clan's squares. Thus the militants carried out observation, control and tracking services, video-shooting, interception. The existence of the sales group was also confirmed by the statements made by collaborators of justice, who confirmed the close link between the group and the Cappello-Bonaccorsi mafia family.
About 40 grams of cocaine, partly pure and partly already cut for retail sale, over five kilos of marijuana, as well as sums of money were seized.

Maurizio Barone


Giovanna Carmelina Bartolotta


Giovanni Geraci


Gaetano Lauceri


Salvatore Panassiti


Carmelo Pulvirenti


Santo La Ferlita


Carmelo Andrea Musumeic

[aleksandrored]

19 September 2018 - Palermo, the boss of Guadagna Salvatore Profeta died in hospital

Salvatore Profeta Arrested in 2015


The mafia boss of the family of Santa Maria di Gesù, Salvatore Profeta, died yesterday evening. The boss since November 2015 was detained in the maximum security prison of Tolmezzo, in the province of Udine, to serve a sentence of 8 years and 2 months.

Profeta had been hospitalized for ten days in the hospital, and would have been a heart attack.

Profeta, 73, was considered among the most loyal men to the boss Stefano Bontade, assassinated in 1981 in the war unleashed by the Corleonesi of Totò Riina against the so-called 'losing mafia'. Sentenced to life imprisonment for the massacre of Via D'Amelio, where in 1992 Paolo Borsellino and the escort agents were murdered, Prophet was released in 2011 after the various trials ascertained the false declarations of the false repentant Vincenzo Scarantino .
Returning to the Guadagna, Salvatore Profeta took over the reins of the clan with his old style of 'godfather'.
Speaking of him, the former deputy prosecutor of Palermo, Leonardo Agueci, said: "Prophet was not only the recognized boss but also posed as such"; he had chosen as a 'office' a bar in the main square of the district and every day he received people, dispensed aid and favors to strengthen the control of the territory ".
The boss was arrested three years ago by the Mafia association, extortion and robbery: he was tried, sentenced to eight years and two months he was serving in Tolmezzo prison.

[aleksandrored]

22 September 2018 - Palermo, the new repentant Giovanni Lucchese speaks: "Raised inside the mafia, it is only falsehood"

"I do not feel like being a mobster and I'm not". Thus speaks the new repentant John "Johnny" Lucchese, 46, nephew of Giuseppe Lucchese called "Lucchiseddu", one of the most ruthless killer mafia, as well as son-in-law of Don Ciccio Tagliavia, the boss involved in the massacres of 1992 and 1993.

"I was born into these families, but I realized that it's all a falsehood, it's all a fake, it's all for interest and you think only about easy money or having power", these are the first statements by Lucchese as a collaborator of justice. All the details in the article by Sandra Figliuolo on the Giornale di Sicilia on newsstands.

[scagghiuni]

La Sicilia publisher 150 mn seized in mafia probe

(ANSA) - Rome, September 24 - Newspaper and TV assets worth
over 150 million euros belonging to the publisher and editor of
the Sicilian daily La Sicilia were seized in a mafia probe on
Monday.
A Catania court ordered the seizure of the assets of Mario
Ciancio Sanfilippo, sources said.
The seizure regards his entire media group including La
Sicilia, majority stakes in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno in Bari,
and two regional broadcasters, Antenna Sicilia and Telecolor.
The court appointed judicial commissioners to take over the
day-to-day running of the group's activities.

[SILENT PARTNERZ]

[iframe]https://www.academia.edu/37484694/Analy ... e_in_Milan[/iframe]

[SILENT PARTNERZ]

The above post is a new research paper about OC
In Milan, Italy. Still learning how to use the forum.

[scagghiuni]

29 drugs arrests in Italy and Spain
Including 'jail killer' Santo Tucci

(ANSA) - Milan, October 3 - Italian police on Wednesday arrested 29 people in two drug trafficking gangs in Italy and Spain.
Among those arrested was Santo Tucci, 62, the so-called 'jail killer'.
Some 219 kg of cocaine was seized as well as several weapons.
Cocaine was brought to Italy from Costa Rica in baskets of pineapples, police said.

the cocaine importers are all sicilians (santo tucci, maurizio ponzo, luigi pappalardo and salvatore grasso) from catania that supplied the calabrians in milan and pavia
last may the catanian broker and businessman salvatore ponzo was shot dead in costa rica