FBIS3-58058
"drweu005__a94026"
FBIS-WEU-93-000-A
Document Type:Daily Report
2 December 1993
ANNEX
Italy
Anti-Mafia Bureau To Continue Fight Against Crime
BR0601103194 Rome ANSAMAIL Database in English 1221 GMT 5
Jan 93--FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
BR0601103194
Rome ANSAMAIL Database
Language: English
Article Type:BFN
[Unattributed article: "War on Mafia Far From Over, DIA
Report Says"]
[Text] Rome, 5 Jan (ANSA) -- Organized crime has suffered
several blows over recent years but maintains hold on
significant economic and financial resources and continues to
intimidate, blackmail and condition even entire communities,
according to the half-year report by the Anti-Mafia
investigative directorate (DIA) which Interior Minister Nicola
Mancino presented to Parliament today. The Mafia strength, the
report said, continues to lie in its various illegal activities
and its influence in political, administrative and judicial
institutions. Given such conditions, the report warned,
enthusiasm should be controlled over the recent and important
success by law enforcement. The DIA report went on to observe
how a "pure terrorist phase" had been consolidated within the
Mafia, as evidenced by last year's bomb attacks in Rome,
Florence and Milan, while the recent confiscation of weapons
demonstrates how organized crime can count on a significant and
sophisticated arms arsenal. There is ample evidence, the report
continued, to assume that leading organized crime groups have
graduated to major wholesale arms trafficking with transactions
standing out for both volume and value and involving other
foreign criminal groups and military-political factions in
foreign countries.
Sicily's Cosa Nostra and other domestic crime syndicates,
the
DIA said, have access not only to automatic weapons but also
military explosives, missiles, cannon, armor-piercing
projectiles and other weapons. Turning its attention to the
various crime bosses currently behind bars, the DIA report
underscored the need the bosses have to reinforce their
leadership over their subjects and how this explained a number
of "symbolic" murders. There is also a growing restlessness
among the imprisoned so-called men of honor who are subject to
special restrictive prison treatment and do not qualify for
special permissions, alternative detention and working out of
jail. This ill-feeling, the DIA claimed, has led many of these
crime figures, over the past months, to decide to collaborate
with justice. But this, in turn, has also opened the way for a
new defense strategy for the part of the Mafia. This defense
strategy, the report said, included a campaign to de-legitimized
turncoats and state's witnesses and to spread disinformation.
Examples of this were the statements by jailed Cosa Nostra boss
of bosses Salvatore Riina on the "manipulation" of turncoats,
the distorted interpretation of the American trial against the
Gambino family and the "heavy and unjustified" attacks against
magistrates and law enforcement. The Mafia is also seeking to
induce the dismantlement the judicial approach set up by the
first anti-Mafia pool, denying the existence of a secret
association and its executive commission.
The DIA report when on to show how a process is currently
underway to unify criminal financial and human resources and
stated that evidence exists proving that these "organized
criminal consortiums" had worked with Cosa Nostra in planning
and carrying out the most recent episodes of Mafia terrorism.
The evidence cited in support of this situation included
testimony by a turncoat and a series of "signals" which
indicated how organized crime groups in Sicily, Calabria and
Campania and, to a lesser degree, Puglia had developed an
intricate network of business and activities. This "horizontal"
integration of organized crime, the DIA report continued, has
resulted in an increase in geographic mobility and the exchange
of assets, duties and capital which has also allowed for
organized crime to expand abroad. Investigators, in fact, have
known for some time of the presence of Italian criminals
operating in France, Germany, Canada, the United States,
Australia and South America. There has also been repeated
confirmation demonstrating how the Mafia is expanding its
activities, interests and investments in former socialist states
in East and Central Europe.
In concert with this "horizontal" development, the DIA
argued, the process of integrating illegal markets has also
resulted in a "vertical" development which is not always under
the guidance of Cosa Nostra. Contacts between various criminal
organizations are "numerous and diversified," the report
continued, with "elements of an illegal nature." Evidence of
this were the proven contacts been Calabria's 'ndrangheta [local
Mafia-style organization] and right-wing extremists in Reggio,
dating as far back as the 1970's, and contacts between the Mafia
and the underground leftist groups. It cannot be ruled out, the
DIA report said, that pacts have been hammered out between these
various illegal organizations to "pilot change in the country to
their own advantage."
Looking at organized crime's sources of income, the DIA
report underscored how racketeering "continues to constitute a
significant source" of illicit income and, over the years,
extortion has become a tool to take over companies.
Loan-sharking is equally as serious, the report warned, while
there would appear to be a decline in drug trafficking, even if
it remains today one of organized crime's chief activities and
money makers. Another area of illegal income, the DIA said, was
through manipulating public works tenders and taking over retail
activities. This allows organized crime a "clean" outlet to
launder significant amounts of illegal profit.
In its section on organized crime's links with public
institutions, the DIA report recalled how, in 1993, 34 municipal
governments were dissolved for Mafia infiltration and
conditioning; ten in Sicily, two in Calabria, seventeen in
Campania, four in Puglia and one in Basilicata. A total of 76
municipal government have been dissolved to date, while charges
of complicity with the Mafia has reached deep into public
institutions, law enforcement and the judiciary.
The battle against the Mafia, the DIA report concluded,
represents a fundamental cornerstone in the overall effort to
renew the State.