Italian mobsters have spread from the south northward
IN THE crime movie “The Italian Job” Charlie, played by Michael Caine, upsets a mafia boss by trespassing on his turf to steal gold. The plot is entertaining, but absurd: the film is set in Turin in 1969, when organised crime in Italy was confined to the downtrodden south.
No longer. On December 10th police arrested 61 people in an operation against the ’Ndrangheta, the mafia from Calabria, the toe of Italy. Such dragnets are common. But this one was launched from Perugia, the capital of Umbria, a region famed for beautiful hilltop towns and Renaissance art—not for mobsters.
Operation Fourth Step was the most startling sign yet of the pervasiveness of Italy’s traditional mafias. Police found evidence that Calabrian gangsters settled in Umbria had planned a murder and violently intimidated shopkeepers, builders and others.
Of all Italy’s main organised-crime groups, the ’Ndrangheta has the deepest roots outside the south. A six-year investigation culminating in 2010 found that its presence in the industrial north was extensive. More than 150 people were arrested.
There are two causes of the spread of Italy’s mafias. One is that richer parts of the country offer more possibilities for laundering the proceeds of crime. The other is a 1956 law that allowed mafiosi to be uprooted from their normal surroundings and sent north. In Umbria investigators point to a third factor: two high-security prisons, which mean that relatives of jailed mobsters have bought houses in the area so they can visit their loved ones more easily.
Operation Fourth Step shifted attention away from another organised-crime scandal, in Rome. Arrests on December 2nd highlighted a gang that has established close links with local officials and politicians of left and right. Prosecutors call the gang, which is led by a one-eyed former far-right terrorist, Mafia Capitale. Its bosses are known to have had links with established crime syndicates. But it is unclear whether they aspired, like genuine mafiosi, to replace the authorities by asserting territorial control of a specific area.
What is most alarming is the ease with which they suborned officials to win contracts for firms in their sway. Among those accused of taking the gang’s money are a former head of Rome’s waste-management company and a former boss of a big municipal property scheme. Most skulduggery took place while Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-fascist, was mayor. But the mobsters also had good relations with several leading members from the centre-left Democratic party (PD). One was arrested.
The PD’s leader (and prime minister), Matteo Renzi, has moved swiftly to limit the damage by announcing a bill to stiffen the penalties for corruption. If it survives its passage through parliament it will be a welcome step in the right direction for a country that earlier this month slipped to joint last place in the European Union in Transparency International’s corruption-perceptions index.