New Mafia Group Found in Rome

Italian Law Enforcement Officials Call It Italy's Fifth Major Mafia Group

Mafia Capitale is based in Rome.


In a story posted this week about Matteo Messina DenaroThe Independent notes that Italian law enforcement has uncovered what is believed to be Italy's fifth major Mafia group. It's based in Rome.

The organized crime group is less violent prone than the traditional Mafias and seems to largely rely on corruption. In terms of age, it goes back "at least three administrations."




Recently, evidence has emerged of a major new Mafia-type organisation in the Rome seaside suburb of Ostia. 
In the city itself, Rome’s chief prosecutor this month ordered 37 arrests in a bid to decapitate what he called the Mafia Capitale, a group of Roman gangsters, businessmen, public officials and politicians that has been skimming hundreds of millions of euros off public services, from contracts for refuse disposal to immigration holding centres. 
Significantly, after years in which factions of the established Mafia groups have fought Roman turf wars, Mafia Capitale appears to have cooperated with ‘Ndrangheta, and the group’s leader, an ex-member of a far-right terror group was in the past linked to the city’s own Magliana gang of hoodlums – made famous by the TV drama Romanzo Criminale. 
... Mafia groups are becoming more international in outlook. ‘Ndrangheta, however, has taken this approach to new levels with its domination of Europe’s cocaine trade. This year, a report written by 20 anti-Mafia experts, including senior prosecutors, said that lax EC regulations against money laundering meant that Mafia groups were benefiting from globalisation while “in contrast, EU states are suffering the consequences.”

In addition to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Neapolitan Camorra, Calabrian Ndrangheta and Apulian Sacra Corona Unita are considered the four major Mafias in Italy.  La Stidda (Sicilian for "star," a tattoo of which all members wear), a direct rival to Cosa Nostra also based in Sicily, is smaller and mostly unheard of in America.

"Diabolik" -- aka Matteo Messina Denaro 
Matteo Messina Denaro is considered "the last great Cosa Nostra kingpin." He has been on the run for more than 20 years and was convicted in his absence for the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 10 people in Rome, Florence and Milan.

Denaro (born in April 1962) is nicknamed Diabolik, after an Italian comic book series. Investigators recently seized Denaro's prized olive groves in Sicily "worth 20 million Euros. “Seizing assets remains the main way to fight the Mafia,” said provincial commander Giancarlo Trotta. Wire taps obtained by prosecutors suggest the profits from the olive oil company have been funding Messina Denaro's run from the law.


The Daily Beast posted a story about Mafia Capitale, noting that it is a "new organized-crime syndicate, dubbed Italy’s “fifth Mafia” by the Italian press and “Mafia Capitale” by the police."

Over the last few days, Rome has been rocked by a scandal that redefines Italian corruption and explains why one of the world’s most beautiful cities has fallen into a state of degradation.

A new organized-crime syndicate, dubbed Italy’s “fifth Mafia” by the Italian press and “Mafia Capitale” by the police, has been operating for years, it would seem. But rather than using violence to do their damage, they've been exploiting Rome’s weakest residents and starving the city of basic amenities like street cleaning and garbage collection, which has made the Eternal City increasingly unlivable—and dangerous. 
“The investigation into Rome as the mafia capital exposes a disgusting, horrifying situation that goes well beyond even the darkest hypothesis,” consumer-rights group Federconsumatori said.
Italian authorities have arrested 37 people so far, including Massimo Carminati, a 56-year-old one-eyed former neofascist terrorist who allegedly guided a gang of white-collar thugs that bilked the city of hundreds of millions of euros over the last several years. Hundreds of people affiliated with the group are also under investigation, including Rome’s former mayor Gianni Alemanno—an ally of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi—and the man he hired as his anti-corruption tsar, Italo Politano. The president of Rome’s parliament and the head of the city’s public-housing division were also arrested. Authorities have seized more than $250 million in assets from businesses across Rome. 
According to transcripts from wiretaps collected over the past year, the group has even been siphoning off profits from refugee centers and bolstering petty criminals, including Gypsies who run unchecked in the city’s high-traffic tourist areas. 
“Do you have any idea how much I can make on these immigrants?” Carminati wingman Salvatore Buzzi was caught telling an associate, bragging about making a €40 million profit (about $49 million) on everything from migrant housing to fake contracts for liaison services between the Rom and Sinti shelters and city hall. “It’s a lot more profitable than drug-trafficking.”
According to prosecutors, Buzzi ran several shell companies that were given contracts for necessary services the city has been left to struggle without—including leaf removal, the lack of which has left cobblestone streets a death trap and caused millions of euros in flood damage from even nominal storms when sewers get stuffed with dead foliage. Investigators have also suggested that the city’s police department and secret services may have complicit members.
“Do you have any idea how much I can make on these immigrants? It’s a lot more profitable than drug-trafficking.” 
The Mafia Capitale investigation began last year, shortly after Ignazio Marino was elected to succeed Alemanno as mayor. Marino described to the foreign press how one of the first things he did when he took over the office was to call the tax police to invite them to check the books. As he had suspected, he said, there had been years of corruption and layers of deceitful action that went back at least three administrations. He found payouts in the hundreds and thousands of euros to people who had no right to them, including settlements to suspicious characters for injuries suffered due to the absence of vital services—all of which were missing because of fake contracts to nonexistent firms who weren’t performing them. 

Comments

  1. When in Rome do as the Romans do

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  2. Again greedy fucks all looking to move up scam other capos or the kid who.s father built it up in the end thats why people rat like it or not whats great about this crew in the the boss massino brought them all down and still probably kept most of his hidden stash not a bad move i guess eventually somebody would.ve wsnted his spot and killed him anyway. So he lives with it and the threat he could be cliped but out of sight out of mind he bought himself a few more yrs on the outside living large no pund intended and has the cash to do so not a bad trade.philly

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