Italian police accuse mafia ring of profiting from migrants

ROME: Italy has broken up a mafia ring accused of infiltrating one of the country’s largest migrant reception centers and capitalizing on asylum seekers with the help of a Catholic association, police said on Monday.

The Arena clan, a family belonging to the powerful ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate, allegedly made a fortune by supplying services for the center at Isola di Capo Rizzuto and syphoning off money from the state destined for the migrants.

“Over 500 agents arrested 68 people... accused of mafia association, extortion, carrying illegal weapons, fraud, embezzlement to the detriment of the state, (and) theft,” police in Catanzaro, a city in Calabria, said in statement.

Their investigation revealed “that the clan controlled, for profit, the management of the reception center” at Isola di Capo Rizzuto — which has held up to 1,500 migrants at a time — for over a decade.

Police arrested Leonardo Sacco, the 35-year-old head of the Catholic Misericordia association which runs the center, who has boasted of links to high-powered political figures.

Local priest Edoardo Scordio was also detained in the sting.

“Some €32 million ($35 million) went straight into the clan’s pocket,” said Vincenzo Luberto, assistant prosecutor. He added that Scordio had received €150,000 for offering “spiritual guidance” to the migrants.

Police said that the Arena clan, through Sacco, awarded contracts for services such as the center’s food supplies to associations it set up specifically for the purpose, as well as to other ‘Ndrangheta families.

It also provided food services to the reception center on Lampedusa, the Italian island which for several years was the frontline of the migrant humanitarian crisis, the biggest influx in Europe since World War II.

The head of the country’s anti-mafia commission, Rosy Bindi, said the sting was “an important result in the fight against the ‘Ndrangheta and the infiltration of mafia in the management of migrants.”