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 received little attention in Italy, where municipal governments, town councils and local public health agencies are regularly dissolved due to mafia infiltration or collusion, and independent commissioners are appointed to take charge. relay.

While the popular image of the Italian mafia was made famous by Don Corleone and the gang shootings of “The Godfather,” the reality of organized crime in Italy today is far more nuanced and is eating 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.

Puglia, which will host this week's G7 summit, ranks fourth among Italian regions for the number of local administrations dissolved due to mafia infiltration, with 26 decrees issued since 1991, out of a national total of 326, according to Avviso. Pubblico, an Italian association that follows the 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, what we call the phase of dissimulation and camouflage,” explains Marilù Mastrogiovanni, investigative journalist and professor of journalism at the University of Bari.

This phase, which is now bearing fruit for the clans, was about avoiding calamitous acts of violence “so that everyone, from ordinary citizens to law enforcement, would forget 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 police force, says 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.