NDRANGHETA in CALABRIA

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NDRANGHETA in CALABRIA

• Vincent C Figliomeni, PhD
• FRANCESCO FIGLIOMENI SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
  CENTEER IN CALABRIA
• vfiglio_at_tin.it

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Ndrangheta in Calabria

• This is the Calabrian version of the Mafia.
  They use violence for maintaining the fear and
  informal social control over the population with
  whom their very existence ironically is
  maintained.
• On the 150th anniversary of the unification of
  Italy, there is good reason to revisit this
  Ndrangheta issue as it persists in stifling the
  political, social and economic development of an
  otherwise culturally serene and potentially rich
  southern most region on the Italian peninsula
• This study is still ongoing and provides an
  analytic framework in order to better understand
  this crime problem as well as to offer some
  salient criminological strategies that can
  enhance current progress of combating this
  criminal element that is infested into the social
  fabric of Calabria

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• The Ndrangheta groups are approx 100 total 6000.
  Until 1975, the 'Ndrangheta restricted their
  Italian operations to Calabria, mainly involved
  in extortion and blackmailing - kidnapping rich
  targets from Northern Italy.
• Local Gang wars occurred in 1975 subsiding after
  a few years errupting again in the Second
  'Ndrangheta war from 1985 to 1991. Interests
  expanded worldwide.
• In the 1990s, the Ndrangheta invested in the
  illegal international drug trade importing
  cocaine from Colombia.
• Meanwhile the Sicilian Mafia was the focal point
  of Italian authorities. The Mafias violent
  confrontation with state and civil society
  culminated in the 1992 murders of judges Falcone
  and Borsellino, which invoked the anti-mafia
  movement causing strong legislative and law
  enforcement countermeasures.

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• LAW ENFORCEMENT SUCCESS
• JUDICIAL CHALLENGES
• INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

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• On 16 October 2005 Francesco Fortugno, popular
  center-left politician and deputy president of
  the regional parliament was asasinated by the
  'Ndrangheta in Locri.
• The Italian government started large-scale
  enforcement operations in Calabria arresting
  hundreds of Ndrangheta members and associates
  including the those alleged to be the murderers
  of Fortugno.
• Demonstrations occurred against the Ndrangheta
  and subsided gradually as prosecutions dragged
  out.
• The 'Ndrangheta had already expanded to Northern
  Italy to sell drugs and to invest in legitimate
  businesses used for money laundering.

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• In May 2007 twenty 'Ndrangheta were arrested in
  Milan.
• On 30 August 2007 police raided the small
  Calabrian town of San Luca, the focal point of
  rival clans among the 'Ndrangheta. Over 30 men
  and women, linked to the killing of six Italian
  men in Duisenberg Germany, were arrested.
• In March 2006, a national anti-Mafia prosecutor
  discovered a 'Ndrangheta narco submarine in
  Colombia to be used for smuggling cocaine.
• In September 2009 'Ndrangheta allegedly sunk
  dozens of ships loaded with radioactive waste off
  the Italian coast and near developing countries.
• Reports of other toxic dumping have emerged
  (Cordova 2010)

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• Last year, Ndrangheta Associates were arrested
  in operations on 3 continents
• Italy/Germany, Canada and Australia.
• In July 2010, the 305 'Ndrangheta members
  arrested revealed that the 'ndrangheta was
  extremely "hierarchical, united and pyramidal,"
  and not just clan-based as previously believed,
  according to Italy's chief anti-mafia prosecutor
  Piero Grasso.
• These recent international arrests have included
  mayors, police, and civil servants along with
  rank in file.
• The arrests stemmed from a wiretapping operation
  by Italian police in which they recorded senior
  mafia suspects discussing operations all over the
  world.
• Those arrested were charged with offences e.g.,
  drug trafficking, money laundering and protection
  rackets and possession of arms and explosives.

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• Furthermore, anti-mafia legislation has become
  the target of politicians and state officials
  colluding with the mafia or sharing mafiosi's
  judicial interests.
• Italys current Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi,
  has been suspected of investing and laundering
  Cosa Nostra money at the beginning of his career.
• He has been countering anti-corruption and
  anti-mafia investigations against him and his
  associates ever since his political career began
  in 1994 .
• Even more than in the past, the survival of mafia
  groups seems to depend on how their relationships
  with politics are set up in the future (Paoli
  2003 212).

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• On 30 May 2008, George Bush inserted the
  Ndrangheta on the black-list of undesirable
  oganizations, implemented through the Kingpin Act
  of 1999.
• The immediate consequence of the presidential
  decision was the connection between persons of
  the USA affiliated with or doing business with
  Ndrangheta money.
• In the USA, its enough that one buys a pizzaria
  with dirty money and the FBI arrive and place you
  in handirons and seal-up the establishment until
  resold for the best offer. The news is
  sensational. But in Italy, it goes unnoticed.
  (Veltri/Laudati 2009149)
• USA does not have all of the legal authorities in
  place to eliminate organized crime like the
  Ndragheta.

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• Rather, working in concert in a global effort to
  share criminal intelligence (some law enforcement
  in Italy does inform the USA of the Ndrangheta)
  as much as the USA informs Italy of American Cosa
  Nostra operating abroad.
• The Ndrangheta is invisible like the other side
  of the moon according to Florida State
  Prosecutor, Julie Tingwall, in Tampa during the
  1980s
• Few insider witnesses powerful families do not
  exibit grand villas, but live modestly.
  Ndrangheta is entrenched with the state and
  doesnt combat it. The state is weak and the
  Ndrangheta needs it for its public spending
  banking, financing,hospitals, roads
  superhighways, railroad, ports, central electric
  power, power incineration are welcome because it
  brings money. (Veltri/Laudati 2009148)

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• Giuseppe Pignatone -
• anti-mafia prosecutor Reggio Calabria
• "The foreign groups always maintain contact with
  the centre of operations (in Reggio Calabria
  area) where they periodically come to take their
  orders, directives, long-term strategies, as well
  as give an account of what's going on. The
  fulcrum remains Calabria."
• Unlike the Sicilian Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta
  managed to maintain a horizontal organizational
  structure up to the early 1990s, avoiding the
  establishment of a formal superordinate body.
• Information from recent witnesses has undermined
  the myth of absolute autonomy of Calabrian crime
  families.

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• According to Italian DIA (Direzione Investigativa
  Antimafia, Department of the Police of Italy
  against organized crime) and Guardia di Finanza
  (Italian Customs Police) the Ndrangheta is one
  of the most powerful criminal elements.
• Economic activities of 'Ndrangheta include
  international cocaine and weapons smuggling, with
  Italian investigators estimating that 80 of
  Europe's cocaine passes through the Calabrian
  port of Gioia Tauro and is controlled by the
  'Ndrangheta. (Europol 2010).
• The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  (UNODC) estimated that in 2007 almost 4 MT of
  cocaine was intercepted in Italy. (UNODC 2009).

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• 'Ndrangeta groups and Sicilian Cosa Nostra groups
  sometimes act as joint ventures in cocaine
  trafficking enterprises.
• Further activities include skimming money off
  large public work construction projects, money
  laundering and traditional crimes such as usury
  and extortion.
• 'Ndrangheta invests illegal profits in legal real
  estate and financial activities.
• The business volume of the 'Ndrangheta is
  estimated at almost 44 billion euro in 2007,
  approximately 2.9 of Italy's GDP, according to
  Eurispes (European Institute of Political,
  Economic and Social Studies) in Italy.

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• SOCIAL INTERVENTION
• ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
• LONG TERM EDUCATION

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• The most important challenge facing the Italian
  political class in the anti-mafia struggleis is
  identical of that which it confronts in the wider
  sphere
• that of relegitimizing the exercise of public
  power by example, of leading Italians toward a
  faith in public authority and institutions and
  reversing the common view of the state as a
  hostile force to be distrusted to one which
  recognizes it as guardian of the collective
  good.
• in Paolo Borsellinos words, if the state
  works throughout Italy, there is a real chance
  that the criminal phenomenon whch has so
  tragically depleted the extraordinary people and
  land of Italys mezzogiorno will wither and fade
  away (Jamieson 2000 235).

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• Ndrangheta is the strongest, most flexible,
  dynamic, and trusted in the international drug
  trafficking market, most rooted in Italy, in the
  center, in the north, and abroad.
  (Gratteri/Nicaso 2011 143)
• But it is the least studied and most mysterious.
  A mafia that seeks to move shielded from the
  spotlight with the exception of the murder of
  Francesco Fortugno Regional Vice President (2005
  in Locri) and the Duisburg affair (2007 in
  Germany), that the Ndtangheta considered a
  dangerous accident. A mafia that prefers to build
  social relations and penetrates in silence
  politics and institutions in order to exercise
  control totally in the sector of public works
  contracts and management of public finances,
  national and European. (Gratteri/Nicaso 2011
  144)

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• In order to defeat the mafia, you need the
  forces necessary to stay everyday in that sector
  to control the level and magnitude of penetration
  into contracts, local entities and politics.
  (Gratteri/Nicaso 2011 151)
• The battle is cultural, a problem of social
  intervention and long term education. ..There is
  undoutibly a responsibility and a duty for those
  that lost their lives constructing long term
  legality and justice of the nation, but also a
  committment really embraced by all and that cant
  be delegated to only law enforcent and or the
  judiciary a duty to do our part like citizens,
  and of organizers. (Morabito/Ciotti 2010115)

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• THE NDRANGHETA EXISTS AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE
  FABRIC OF SOCIETY
• - over a hundred years of tradition
• - integrated into both illegitimate and
  legitimate business
• - have less pentiti as the close bloodties among
  associates avoids insider witnesses
•  - culturally more relavant and socially more
  potent than the government
• OVER AND ABOVE THE ANTI-MAFIA LEGISLATION
  IMPLEMENTED, OTHER AUTHORITIES ARE NEEDED
• More customized Laws designed to identify,
  interrupt and infiltrate illegal business
  transactions among suspected organized crime
  actors are required
• Prosecution is complex, legnthly and dependent on
  reluctant witnesses often creating loopholes for
  those on trial
• Pretrial rules require more stringent application
  

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• MAJOR SOCIALIZATION CHANGE and LOCALIZED
  IMPROVEMENTS IN LEGITIMATE OPPORTUNITY
• Anti-organized crime studies in schools at all
  grades
• Community-wide public demonstrations stressing
  civic ethical and moral condemnation of the
  Ndrangheta and organized crime
• Public aweareness campaigns on negative impacts
  of Ndrangheta organized crime on local and global
  communities
• More flexible and effective Legislation in
  support of enforcement against Ndrangheta
  organized crime activities
• Public awareness of successful prosecutions
• Greater local legitimate economic opportunities

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• WAY AHEAD
• Collect Official Crime data on Ndrangheta
• Content Analysis of Media Coverage
• Interviews with key leaders in Calabria
• Law Enforcement, Prosecutors and Judges
• Political, Social Services, and Business leaders
• Educators and Religious leaders
• Issue Public Opinion Questionnaire regarding
  political, social, cultural, and economic change

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NDRANGHETA in CALABRIA

• QUESTIONS?

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NDRANGHETA in CALABRIA

• Dr. Vincent C Figliomeni, PhD
• FRANCESCO FIGLIOMENI SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
  CENTEER IN CALABRIA
• vfiglio_at_tin.it

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