The money trail: 'Mafias in the good salons of finance'

"Organised crime does not operate in a physical space to launder money or invest in legal activities. There is no city, region or country that is more or less infiltrated in this respect than others. On the contrary, there are many different financial spaces, in which the various consortia - be they cosa nostra, 'ndrangheta or camorra - reach an agreement to partition, polluting the socio-economic fabric through compliant entrepreneurs and professionals'. A scenario made even more alarming by the use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, which the cosche also make use of. Thus General Michele Carbone, Director of the Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, in a video interview with Il Sole 24 Ore, which will be broadcast this morning on the website of our newspaper.

Drawing on his investigative experience in the financial sector, Carbone outlined the economic aggression strategies implemented by organised crime, starting from a metamorphosis that began 'in the 1980s, which led to the evolution of the mafioso into an entrepreneur. As illicit trafficking increased, so did liquidity and the need to recycle it'.

Today, the schemes of financial crime have been refined, they have made a quantum leap. "We make use of professionals who are experts in the tax-legal field", but more and more often the consortia decide to invest in their own affiliates, making them study at universities and in financial administration masters courses abroad. "There is no organised crime investigation where the professional accomplice who carried out illicit certifications or asseverations is not discovered".

In this sense, the concept of the dematerialisation of the operating space of the clans returns: the most productive areas are the most attractive. "This was confirmed by an investigation carried out in Rome: 'ndrangheta and camorra were investing together in the Capital, taking advantage of the local criminality and exploiting the Capitoline entrepreneurship" in a false invoice ring estimated at half a billion euro. "They had created a money laundering centre in Rome. This is an evolved model based on the agreement between organisations that, however, does not only concern the Capital'.

In the rest of Italy and other European countries, through endless injections of dirty money, the mafia has managed to 'sit in renowned financial and market salons'. "In the ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and now increasingly in Norway, tons of cocaine are imported. This does not mean that those countries are used for transit, it means that there is a logistical and infiltration network in the companies there, for example those that manage the container system. It means that the mafia is in their territory and controls a slice of the market'. Consider that, according to Europol, 80% of the mafias active in Europe have recourse to the business world. The investigative findings reveal the role of 'natural and legal persons' linked to Italian cosche 'who launder in the rest of Europe and beyond'. The problem abroad, however, 'is not so much a lack of awareness of the mafia phenomenon as a lack of experience. We have been dealing with the mafia theme in Italy for decades. Other countries, including European ones, have now realised that this is not just an Italian problem'.