The new recent warning launched by Federico Cafiero de Raho, National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor, during the recent conference organized by the Bank of Italy headquarters in Milan and by the National Association for the Study of Credit Problems, regarding the ever increasing crime infiltration also organized in the legal economy and the opportunities offered to it by the spread of Covid 19 pandemic.
The starting figure is the size of the organized crime market that can be assessed, according to estimates by the United Nations agency UNODOC - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime -, around 500 billion dollars worldwide, 30 of which in Italy, figures that give a good idea of the pervasiveness of this pathology. Figures, which also justify the call by the Agency itself to our country not to let its guard down against Italian mafia organizations: from Cosa Nostra to the 'Ndrangheta, from the Camorra to the Apulian mafias.
Cafiero de Raho, in his analysis starts from the genetic mutation of the mafias, underlining that “originally the mafias resorted to violent methods to control the territories; over time, they have assumed, also following the repressive response of the State, a different physiognomy, which camouflages their original characteristics. The mafias, today, forge power relations, run the business by interfering with the market and influencing its development; create a complex system, in which the military structure (in the improper sense, referring to the mafia laborers) is almost servile compared to the economic-entrepreneurial one, made up not only of colluded entrepreneurs, but also of accountants, lawyers, professionals, who support it, they facilitate it, they advise it”.
With this picture it is certainly not difficult to accept his definition of "mafia bourgeoisie"ultimately constituted by a sphere of culturally structured, professionally prepared people, apparently inserted in the legal path. In reality, in this way, "the protective screen of the mafias and their coverage is integrated, constituting the reassuring interface, which allows the invisible infiltration of the legal economy and civil society". Ultimately, we are now at what can be more correctly defined "business mafia than territorial mafia".
And in support of this observation, the National Prosecutor cites some significant examples: from the seizure of a year ago, for over two hundred million euros, carried out against entrepreneurs linked to the gangs of 'Ndrangheta with a wealth of real estate and a galaxy of companies, with which they operated in the legal economy like other economic subjects; to the "hands-on" operation last May developed by the Guardia di Finanza with 91 arrests between Palermo and Milan and the involvement of subjects with roots and big business in Milan, where enormous flows of money were guaranteed by the mafia to be laundered also thanks to the complicity of a Milanese accountant; and, finally, to the three companies in Milan and one in Vimercate, recipients of an emergency preventive seizure last month, as according to the indictment, they allegedly managed a complex activity of laundering money from illicit profits.
This is why, in the light of these considerations and examples, the economic crisis generated by the Covid-19 certainly offers new opportunities to criminal groups and mafias, who need to invest the abundant liquidity they have. “The sectors are those in which the mafias have specialized due to the opportunities determined by past emergencies, such as multi-service companies (canteens, cleaning, disinfection), labor intermediation, the waste cycle chain, construction companies; but also those that appear particularly lucrative, such as the trade in personal protective equipment, as well as the tourism business, bars, restaurants, hotels".
Cafiero de Raho speaks, therefore, openly of a plurality of “middle worlds” con "symbiotic relationships between public actors, entrepreneurs, economic and financial operators, professionals, criminal actors". The tools of violence and intimidation are no longer used to infiltrate the legal economy, but those "of corruption or convenience, through the offer of illegal services, such as false invoices, which constitute the means of approaching and, therefore, aggregating healthy businesses in momentary difficulty”.
What to do then? Cafiero de Raho, first of all, remembers the Palermo Convention of the United Nations of 2000 against transnational organized crime and the other of Merida, also of the United Nations, which entered into force in 2005 against corruption, which laid the concrete foundations for a strengthening of international judicial cooperation and that of the forces of police.
A starting point that is certainly important and which will also be effective in the future in the fight against organized crime which does not hesitate to unscrupulously use new operating modes, such as those offered by digital currencies. Another area, in which it will be essential to give substance with adequate means to ambitious and challenging projects, such as the establishment of a European Financial Intelligence Unit (a European-based FIU) and a European supervisory body managed by EBA - European Banking Authority.
Decisive steps forward, according to Cafiero de Raho, to "overcome the phase of disharmony that still exists between regulatory systems to the point of having to talk more about regulatory havens than tax havens” and to ensure the healthy socio-economic development of our democracies.
