Beyond gang shootings and drug trafficking, the Italian mafia poses a threat to democracy

ROME (AP) — An Italian administrative court last month upheld the dissolution of the municipal administration of the Puglia town of Neviano after an investigation determined that local officials were unduly influenced by the mafia.

The decision barely made news in Italy, where municipal governments, city councils and local public health agencies are regularly dissolved because of mafia infiltration or collusion, and independent commissioners appointed to take over.

While the popular image of the Italian Mafia was made famous by Don Corleone and the gang shootouts of “The Godfather”, the reality of organized crime in Italy today is much more nuanced and eats away at the heart of its democracy: local governance.

From awarding large public works contracts to small-town decisions about managing landfills, parking lots and beach concessions, local governments are particularly vulnerable to mafia influence and corruption, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an interinstitutional organization.

Apulia, which will host the Group of Seven summit this weekranks fourth among Italian regions for the number of local administrations dissolved due to mafia infiltrationwith 26 decrees issued since 1991, out of a national total of 326, according to Avviso Pubblico, an Italian association that tracks decrees.

This fourth place also corresponds to the fourth place of his local mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita, in the hierarchy of Italian mafia clans.

The SCU is the youngest and smallest organized crime group in the country, after the 'ndrangheta in Calabria, the Camorra in Campania and the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. And it is the only one whose origins are really known: it was founded in prison in the early 1980s by Pino Rogoli as an autonomous alternative to the other mafias based in Puglia.

While initially focused on trafficking cigarettes and other contraband with Balkan countries, the SCU's clan organization evolved into drug trafficking and extortion.

In the 2000s, it began a new phase of “rooting itself in the territory, the so-called phase of concealment and camouflage,” explained Marilù Mastrogiovanni, investigative journalist and professor of journalism at the University of Bari.

This phase, which is bearing fruit today for the clans, consisted of avoid calamitous acts of violence “so that everyone, from ordinary citizens to law enforcement, forgets about it,” she said.

Now the focus is on laundering drug profits through legitimate front companies, many of which supply Puglia's booming tourism industry, while infiltrating local public administration to direct public contracts , said Carla Durante, head of the Lecce office of the Italian anti-mafia investigation. Direction.

Europol, the European policeclaims that 60% of the organized crime groups it tracks in Europe engage in some form of corruption, ranging from petty bribery of public officials to multi-million euro bribery schemes.

“Corruption erodes the rule of law, weakens state institutions and hinders economic development,” Europol said in its latest report, “Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment.”

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This story, supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, is part of an ongoing Associated Press series covering threats to democracy in Europe.