Tag Archives: italian mafia

Cash-strapped Italian Mafia cuts spending on drug pushers and family support

On the streets of Rome crime doesn’t pay – or at least not like it once did.

One of the city’s most feared local mafia clans has been forced to cut spending after 37 of its alleged members were arrested by police in recent raids.

The Cordaro clan has cut daily payments to drug pushers and financial aid for jailed members and their families, according to prosecutors involved in the latest chapter of Rome’s ‘Mafia Capitale’ investigation.

The clan, known for its violent domination of Rome’s Tor Bella Monaca district, has been linked to several murders and major drug trafficking by police and prosecutors.

Disgruntled associates have been recorded by police complaining about cutbacks ordered by Natasha Cordaro, who took over the clan’s financial operations after her husband, Valentino Iuliano, was arrested on July 5.

Thirty-year-old Cordaro began by cutting clan payments to the families of jailed members from €150 a week to only €50 a week, according to the Italian daily, Il Messaggero.

“€150 plus 150 makes €300 a fortnight,” Michela Bucceri complained on a visit to her jailed mother, Elena, in a telephone tap recorded by police. “I am missing out on €200, they have taken it off me.”

Cordaro also cut daily payments from €80 to €70 per day to drug pushers who work for the clan in the crime-ridden neighborhood on the city’s outskirts.

“I have responsibilities,” Cordaro reportedly told pushers. “I am counting on €3,000 but you are only bringing me €900, what should I do? I have 15 families I’m carrying on my shoulders.”

She was recorded threatening one subordinate who complained.

“It is a crisis, it’s better you realise that. If not I will cut your throat,” she said.

Thirty-seven alleged members of the clan were arrested in dawn raids in the crime-ridden neighbourhood on July 5.

Read Full – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/25/cash-strapped-italian-mafia-cuts-spending-on-police-bribes/

Helen Mirren: My mafia connection – Mafia Documentary On Page

The British actress explains why she decided to narrate the documentary A Very Sicilian Justice.

By Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren is an award-winning British actress.

I am passionate about Italy – in particular the people and places of South Italy – and I have a much-loved home there.

Italy has a dark history of mafia violence and political corruption. But it also has many incredibly brave and brilliant public servants – police, magistrates and politicians – who risk their lives and careers day in, day out to fight this enemy within. The threats they receive also put their family life under terrible strain.

These largely unsung heroes need to be recognised and supported.

At the heart of the documentary A Very Sicilian Justice is the astonishing and shocking story of one man – a public servant – who lives in fear and whose freedom is severely restricted simply because he is doing his job.

I also have a personal connection to the events described in the documentary. A close friend – the architect we employed to build our house in Italy, Brizio Montinaro – lost his brother in 1992 in the explosion of mafia violence described in the film.

Antonio Montinaro was a police bodyguard who died alongside the famous anti-mafia prosecutor, Judge Giovanni Falcone, in a bomb attack as he escorted the judge along the Palermo motorway. Falcone’s wife and two other bodyguards were also killed.

Today, almost 25 years later, Judge Antonino Di Matteo is investigating the criminal and political context behind these and other killings and, incredibly, finds himself under tremendous threat for doing so.

The murder plot and threats against Judge Di Matteo show that these events from the past are still very much alive today.

As Di Matteo says in the film, unless Italy faces up to and uncovers the truth behind this tragic period in its recent history, the events of this terrible “season of terror” will continue to poison and polarise Italy’s body politic for ever.

In Italy, the ongoing trials and investigations into this period are little reported. Internationally, this story is virtually unknown.

I hope that A Very Sicilian Justice, by bringing these important events to a worldwide audience, will give added support and recognition to Judge Di Matteo and his colleagues.

Many think Italian organised crime and corruption are confined somehow within Italy’s borders, but this is a dangerous misunderstanding of what “mafia” is.

The proceeds of crime are not only invested abroad and hidden in international tax havens. According to Italian investigators, mafias worldwide have changed their modus operandi. They are increasingly sophisticated, work together and operate more quietly than before through political corruption and by infiltrating the business and financial worlds.

Despite the recent referendum result in the UK and the potential knock-on effect of a severely divided Europe, I passionately believe countries, now more than ever, need to be vigilant, cooperate and unite if we are to win the battle against organised crime and political corruption.

Full article – http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/07/helen-mirren-mafia-connection-160706080712820.html

How the Italian mafia’s top mobsters used a five-year-old girl to smuggle secret notes after taking her out for ice cream

  • Matteo Messina Denaro, head of the Sicilian mafia, is Italy’s most wanted
  • He and his right hand man used Attilio Fogazza’s daughter to run memos
  • Notes were shoved in the five-year-old’s backpack and jacket after gelato
  • Cosa Nostra kingpin Messina Denaro on the run for more than 20 years  

Italy’s most wanted mobster used a five-year-old girl to run secret messages for him, a mafia informant has revealed.

Head of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra Matteo Messina Denaro used Attilio Fogazza’s young daughter to carry handwritten notes between himself and other mafia top dogs.

Kingpin Denaro has not been seen in public for 20 years, and is considered in the top 10 most wanted men in the world.

Fogazza, who himself is on a murder charge, said Messina Denaro’s second-in-command Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Scimonelli approached his daughter to run the memos, known as ‘pizzini’.

The right-hand man had taken his daughter for an ice cream and put the messages inside her jacket and backpack.

The daughter and the rest of Fogazza’s family have been living in a secret location under police protection while he co-operates with the prosecutors as they attempt to bring down the ‘boss of bosses’ in the Italian mafia scene.

Fogazza, 44, ran a car dealership in south-western Sicily and decided to collaborate with Palermo investigators after he was arrested last December for the murder of Salvatore Lombardo in 2009 who was killed after he stole a van from Scimonelli.

“One day my daughter said ‘Uncle Mimmo’ had taken her for a gelato and put the messages inside her jacket and her backpack,” Fogazza told prosecutors in Palermo according to Italian media reports.

Last year, a Palermo judge sentenced six men including Scimonelli from the hierarchy of the Cosa Nostra – meaning ‘Our Thing’ – to a total of 80 years in prison for racketeering, conspiracy and aiding and abetting the mafia.

Head honcho Messina Denaro, 54, has not been seen in public since the early 90s, but a new e-fit was created in 2014 with the help of another informant.

He is wanted for a string of offences, and a judge found him guilty in his absence in 1993 for his part in the bomb attacks that killed 10 people in Rome, Florence and Milan.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3684773/Matteo-Messina-Denaro-head-mafia-Sicily-used-five-year-old-girl-smuggle-Cosa-Nostra-notes.html#ixzz4EBIyOjwO
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The Italian Mafia is Funding Terrorism By Buying Smuggled Hash From ISIS

Italian prosecutor claims that the Italian Mafia is buying hash that was smuggled by ISIS through Libya.

The Italian Mafia and an Islamic terrorist group meet up at a hash-smuggling operation… It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but unfortunately, according to the anti-Mafia and antiterrorism prosecutor, Franco Roberti, it’s the grim reality in the country of Italy. The Italian prosecutor claims that hash is being purchased by the Italian Mafia from Libya, which is being smuggled in by the Islamic terrorist sect ISIS.

The North African hash is being used a major source of income for the Islamic State, and the Italian Mafia is apparently a loyal customer. It’s quite profitable for the Mafia as well, which earns about 32 billion euros ($36.10 billion) a year through their illegal drug trades, a sizable portion of which is made up of hash and cannabis. It’s seems reasonable for Roberti to assume that ISIS is heavily involved. According to Ahmad Moussalli, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut, territorial expansion by ISIS on the Syrian border has put them in control of a vast amount of cannabis fields.

Instead of trying to crack down even more viciously on Italy’s use of cannabis and hash, which the government already spends millions on combating, Roberti has come forth with a much more level-headed approach. Instead, the prosecutor believes that the time has come for Italy to rescind their harsh marijuana laws, citing that decriminalization would negatively affect both the Mafia and the Islamic State.

The decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help land a potentially critical blow to the funding of ISIS, which according to a recently published IHS Conflict Monitor report, has already dropped from $80 million in monthly revenue to $56 million since the middle of 2015. According to Roberti, a major portion of the terrorist cell’s revenue comes from drug trafficking, and decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help put a major dent in that.

To Roberti, it makes sense to persecute the Mafia and the Islamic State in a similar manner, seeing as that Italian Mafia families, particularly in the south, have been long proponents of terrorist activities. The Mafia and ISIS could be more intertwined than it would seem at first glance, as both are heavily dependent on drug trafficking as a revenue source. But does Roberti have a sound argument for decriminalization? I would have to argue that he does.

“We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking. On the contrary, it’s increasing,” said Roberti. “Is it worth using investigative energy to fight street sales of soft drugs?”

Full Article – https://www.merryjane.com/news/the-italian-mafia-is-funding-terrorism-by-buying-smuggled-hash-from-isis

FBI searches alleged Mafia member’s home in bid to crack 1990 art heist

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Tuesday, May 3, 2016, 1:10 PM

A suspected Connecticut mobster may be in on the largest art heist in U.S. history — a $500 million mystery that has remained unsolved for 26 years.

FBI agents returned to the Manchester home of Robert Gentile Monday, marking the third time they’ve raided the 79-year-old alleged mob member’s house.

Federal prosecutors believe Gentile — who is currently behind bars for illegally selling prescription drugs and possessing guns — knows about the 1990 theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Thirteen pieces of art worth an estimated $500 million were stolen and never recovered. The swiped haul included the only seascape legendary Dutch painter Rembrandt ever painted, several paintings by Edgar Degas and one by Johannes Vermeer, a Dutch artist who left behind just 31 known works.

No one was ever arrested.

Federal officials declined to say why FBI agents went to Gentile’s home Monday. Gentile’s lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, also declined to comment.

“The FBI is conducting court-authorized activity … in connection with an ongoing federal investigation,” said Kristen Setera, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston. “We will have no further comment at this time.”

Gentile has told authorities that he doesn’t know anything about the stolen paintings, and McGuigan has denied prosecutors’ allegations that Gentile is a made member of the Philadelphia Mafia.

But prosecutors said that locked-up Gentile has bragged about his knowledge of the paintings: He talked about the stolen works with at least three fellow prisoners at his Rhode Island jail, giving them information on who to call about the art and what code name to use.

Read Full Article – http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/fbi-searches-mafia-home-bid-crack-1990-art-heist-article-1.2623304