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RECIPES WE WOULD DIE FOR: Osso bucco
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Confiscated mafia loot worth billions gives Italy an unexpected problem
Properties including a sprawling beach resort in Sicily are among the huge number of assets seized from gangsters which need to be managed and sold off
An anti-mafia squad officer at the premises of a company seized by the authorities in Sicily on 8 July.
Agence France-Presse
Italy’s battle against the mafia has provoked an unusual problem for the government – the headache of managing a staggering portfolio of assets and cash seized from mobsters.
Officials control about 3,000 companies, 12,000 properties and €2bn in bank deposits and other assets from organised crime outfits, according to some estimates, leaving the government with hundreds of extra employees and properties not seen very favourably by banks.
“In Italy it is more difficult to manage the property seized from the mafia than it is to confiscate it,” Michelangelo Patane, a prosecutor in Sicily, said.
Authorities announced a new seizure Wednesday of €1.6bn ($1.75bn) in alleged mafia property, that included dozens of businesses as well as some 700 houses, villas and buildings.
Seized mafia assets are such an issue in Italy the government created in 2010 a national agency, the ANSBC, to manage the mountain of property.
“We have real estate holdings, companies and other seized mafia assets that have grown more than expected,” ANSBC head Umberto Postiglione told AFP.
One of the properties it manages is a sprawling and spectacular beach resort in the Sicilian town of Catania. Its gardens are local historic landmarks and the resort holds some 300 beach huts for tourists, but banks are left nervous by its past as a mafia-owned property.
“The banks slow us down, they don’t trust confiscated businesses and if we ask for a loan they refuse to give us one,” said Salvatore Piggioli, who works for the company that runs the site.
It is no surprise the government is drowning in mafia assets because it possesses considerable powers to seize them.
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Italian law allows authorities to carry out preventative seizures when mafia involvement is suspected, said accountant Giuseppe Giuffrida, an expert in managing seized mafia assets.
He said an official fund for seized assets like bank deposits and stocks currently holds some two billion euros.
Determination of whether the assets are ill-gotten gains can come swiftly. Authorities simply look to see if the values of the property matches up with the owner’s publicly declared income.
The assets can also be held while their owner is on trial and are returned in the case of a not guilty verdict.
“I have managed assets temporarily (under government control) as well as those that have been seized,” said Giuffrida. “I have never had any problems with the heads of mafia businesses because they know its useless. I have been named by a court and I do my best for the company in question.”
The seizure figures are impressive. Over the past six years authorities have seized 1,286 hectares (3,178 acres) of land, which is about a tenth of the size of Catania, prosecutors said.
Over the same period the number of employees in the seized companies has hit 684, making the collection of properties the fourth largest private employer in Sicily.
But taking away assets from the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in Naples and the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria is not without risks.
Two workers from ANSBC who went to seize a house owned by a local mafioso in Naples got a nasty surprise when they tried to open the home’s door.
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“When they inserted the key handed over by the former owner they were thrown into a wall by a shock of 380 volts,” agency head Postiglione said.
“Luckily they weren’t trying to kill us,” he added.
Once seized, properties can be sold or leased at no cost to towns and associations for new, more honourable uses. One example is the villa that once belonged to Naples crime boss Egidio Coppola and was turned into a museum.
It is also not unusual to spot a flashy Porsche bearing the Red Cross logo at events like the marathon in Rome which also has a label saying “Vehicle confiscated from the Mob”.
ANSBC has in its time sold off 33 supermarkets and a shopping centre, while handing over to firefighters 33 trucks that have come under its control.
When it comes to business, “they are liquidated if they are insolvent if they are (financially) healthy we try to run them normally with the final goal being to sell them off,” Giuffrida said.
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Italy arrests 51 in Ostia anti-mafia raids
Police operation in coastal suburb near capital is described as one of the biggest ever anti-mafia sweeps in Rome area
Police lead away a suspect arrested in Ostia.
Lizzy Davies in Rome
As temperatures soar to around 40C this weekend, thousands of Romans will flock to nearby beaches to roast in the sun, play on the slot machines and dance in sticky seaside nightclubs. They will not be the only ones feeling the heat.
On Friday in an operation that prosecutors said revealed the extent of organised crime in the coastal suburb of Ostia near the Italian capital, 51 people were arrested on suspicion of mafia-related activity.
The crackdown, which involved about 500 police officers as well as dog support units, patrol boats and a helicopter, was described as one of the biggest anti-mafia sweeps ever carried out in the Rome area.
Its aim was to hit at the heart of gangs that prosecutors say have been carving up the coastal territory and sharing its considerable spoils for the past 20 years.
Located about 15 miles south-west of the capital near Leonardo da Vinci airport, Ostia's sandy beaches prove a popular weekend destination for city-dwellers seeking to escape Rome's stifling heat.
Particularly targeted in the operation on Friday were members of three clans – the Fasciani, Triassi, and D'Agati – whom investigators suspect of carrying out criminal activities including drug trafficking and extortion.
The Triassi are believed to have close ties to the Sicilian mafia. The website of Il Fatto Quotidiano, a daily newspaper, headlined the raids: "Welcome to Cosa Nostra beach".
The alleged infiltration by criminal networks in Ostia's political administration emerged this month when police raided the town hall's permit office and placed an employee and local contractors under investigation on suspicion of rigging bids for beach contracts in favour of another mafia clan, the Spada.
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The move prompted Rome's new mayor, Ignazio Marino, to announce that permits to manage Ostia's coastline would henceforth be handled directly from the capital. He said his administration would fight to curb "the underworld infiltration" of Ostia.
"In recent years, the Roman coastline has become fertile ground for criminal activities, the scene of bloody clashes between clans and criminal gangs who seek to control significant parts of the city's economy," he said.
One of the most startling incidents in the increasingly bloody turfwar in Ostia came in November 2011 when two criminals, Giovanni Galleoni and Francesco Antonini, were shot dead in the town centre in broad daylight.
In a separate but equally dramatic anti-mafia operation on Friday morning, police in the southern region of Calabria made dozens of arrests in the city of Lamezia Terme, about 40 miles south of Cosenza, some of which concerned a suspected car-crash scam in which payouts were allegedly used to provide criminals with drugs and arms.
Police said the raids had targeted a panoply of local people suspected of involvement in the scheme, ranging from insurers and lawyers to car repairers. There were also arrests of suspected hitmen on suspicion of several killings between 2005 and 2011, police said.
A Calabria senator in the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Freedom People (PdL) party was being investigated for suspected vote-buying but had not been arrested, they added.
Guido Marino, police chief in nearby Catanzaro, said the raids revealed a flourishing criminal system in the city that had drawn in not only fully paid-up members of criminal gangs but "professionals above suspicion".
"This was a mafia system which not only bloodied Lamezia Terme with murders but which also bled dry a part of [the city's] already fragile economy," he was quoted as telling the Ansa news agency.
Calabria, one of Italy's poorest regions, is the home to the 'Ndrangheta, now Italy's most formidable organised crime syndicate, which has grown far beyond its southern origins into a hugely powerful force thought to control much of the cocaine trade in Europe.
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