Incoming PM aims to hit mafiosi
Mafia mission: Italy’s new Prime Minister said yesterdaythat he would attack ‘‘Mafia Inc’’ by going after the business activities of organised crime.
Matteo Renzi outlined his plan, a week after taking office, in response to an appeal by Roberto Saviano, the author of the hit book and film Gomorrah.
‘‘What is to be attacked is the ‘Mafia Inc’ present in every economic and financial sector of the country, from the south to the centre-north,’’ the Prime Minister wrote in La Repubblica newspaper. ‘‘Attacking the wealth of the mafia can be one of the great responses that the government can give, from an economic point of view, to confront the crisis.’’
Saviano sounded the alarm last week, citing police estimates that organised crime earns 170 billion (NZ$280b) a year in Italy; more than 10 per cent of GDP.
The economic crisis has enabled the country’s four main Mafia groups – La Cosa Nostra, in Sicily, the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta, the Camorra around Naples, and the smaller Sacra Corona Unita – to extend their reach into legitimate businesses by offering to bail out struggling companies that cannot find financing.
Saviano’s 2006 bestseller detailed how the Camorra had taken over the lucrative waste-disposal business around Naples, polluting the land with illegal toxic dumping. He lives in a secret location under police protection and recently admitted taking medication to ward off depression.
The prime minister, aged 39, paid Saviano, 34, the compliment of responding to his appeal with a long article. ‘‘The heart of criminal organisations lies in the businesses they conduct, the wealth they accumulate and flaunt, and the very fine line between licit and illicit,’’ he wrote.
Renzi outlined a plan to pass new money-laundering laws, tighten up antiMafia certification for companies, and change the rules for the dissolution of local governments that have fallen under Mafia control. He pledged to appoint an anti-corruption tsar, as already provided for by a 2012 law. He also plans to take the battle against the Mafia to Brussels when Italy begins its EU presidency in July ‘‘because it’s no longer just an Italian problem’’.