Italian government unveils anti-mafia plan

Thu, 28 Jan 2010

Reggio Calabria, Italy - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday chose the capital of one of Italy's most mafia-infested regions, Calabria, to present a new 10-point plan to combat organized crime. The measures unveiled include a register or code grouping together laws and other instruments allowing authorities to act against mobsters and their financial resources

"The code will assist police and the judiciary to combat the mafia," primarily by confiscating its assets, Berlusconi said at a news conference in Reggio Calabria.

In addition, a new state agency will be created to manage assets seized from mobsters, including businesses, real estate and other properties, according to Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, who together with Justice Minister Angelino Alfano, flanked Berlusconi at the news conference.

The presence of the premier and his ministers in Reggio Calabria is being viewed as a show of strength by the government in the heartland of 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian version of the mafia.

Allegedly the work of the 'Ndrangheta, the bombing earlier this month of a courthouse in Reggio Calabria and the mailing of a bullet to a prominent prosecutor, were both widely interpreted as clear warnings by local criminal clans that the state should not interfere in their activities.

Though less notorious than Sicily's Cosa Nostra and Naples' Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta has over recent years, expanded its operations beyond Italy's borders including cocaine trafficking from Latin America and investments in businesses in Germany and elsewhere.

As Italy's economy shrank last year, mafia clans, all rooted in the country's less-developed south, have, according to anti-racketeering groups, taken advantage of the situation to invest their criminal income in "legitimate" businesses, often run through front-men.

The crime syndicates boosted their profit by 12 per cent to more than 78 billion euros (109 billion dollars), according to Rome-based anti-racketeering group SOS Impresa's 12th annual report.

On Thursday opposition representatives mostly dismissed the conservative government's new strategy.

The leader of main center-left Democratic Party, Pierluigi Bersani, said the measures would amount to "nothing," if the government went ahead with it plans to restrict police use of wiretapping and limit trial lengths, measures that he said benefit mob clans.

The government has said "excessive" wiretapping is too expensive and infringes on privacy rights, while it has vowed to reform Italy's judicial system where all three-stages of a trial can last for as much as a decade.

Prosecutors have denounced the wiretapping law which they say would hamper such police efforts as intercepting mobsters attempting to corrupt local officials and influence tenders for public works projects.

Critics see the short-trial law as "tailor made" to assist Berlusconi in ongoing two corruption trials against him.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/306370,italian-government-unveils-anti-mafia-plan.html.