3/27/2024 – In Reggio Emilia, the implementation of the specific anti-mafia protocol signed with the Prefecture in 2015 (and renewed in 2021) and the creation of the associated Legality office coordinated by the Province, has decreased the permeability of private buildings to mafia infiltration attempts. The mayor says so Luca Vecchi and the president of the Province Giorgio Zannitaking stock of the effectiveness of the tools almost ten years after their first application.
In 2023 – as reported by the Dire agency quoting Vecchi and Zanni – the building interventions for which private individuals have requested authorization and which have been subjected to anti-mafia checks (information or control of registration on the white list) there were almost 1,500, doubled compared to 705 the previous year. Instead, “without the protocols in force, applying national legislation, less than a quarter of these interventions would have been verified”, report Zanni and Vecchi.
For the mayor and president of the Province, therefore, “this exceptionality, or rather the application
of control tools on mafia infiltration also in private construction, it has no other precedents on the national territory“. And “the number of interdictive anti-mafia issued by the Prefecture of Reggio Emilia (61 issued last year and a dozen already in the first two months of 2024) confirms both the importance of the protocols and, above all, the widespread presence in the territory of situations of illegality“.
Precisely on this issue the prosecutor of Reggio Emilia Calogero Gaetano Paciin a recent interview, launched a new alarm on the penetration capacity of the ndrangheta “in grisaille”, which no longer shoots, but still does profitable business: it launders money, controls illegal finance and enters businesses, the real economy, society and administrations of the Reggio Emilia area, with the support of that part of entrepreneurship that is perennially search for fresh money. As evidenced by the incredible extension of the fake invoice industry, which has become a nationwide network to raise cash at the expense of the state.
In short, the Aemilia trial did not eradicate the mafia infection in the Reggio area, mainly due to its historical roots and penetration into all social, economic and political levels which perhaps it has no comparison in Northern Italyand of which First of all, we must thank the local administrations and the economic structures that over the decades have opened the doors to that widespread economic network with Calabrian roots, linked or conditioned by the Ionian ndrangheta, and in particular by the powerful gang of Cutro.
After all the impressive mix of relatives with their ability to control public and private companies and entities, does not need comments: not only at the “basic” level of construction, as emerges once again from the number of disqualifications and failures to register white list, but up to the highest levels of local politics. Intertwinings which, however, strangely, no one investigates.
But this should not be surprising, if it is true – as the report of theformer anti-mafia prosecutor Pennisi for the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court, but stopped for ten months by the former national anti-mafia prosecutor Cafiero De Rahotoday M5S deputy elected in Emilia-Romagna – who the Bologna’s anti-mafia district directorate did not intend to investigate political leaders, former mayors and public managers of the left of Reggio Emilia with the automatic effect of keeping them safe from Aemilia trial.
And it shouldn’t be surprising if they are careful not to talk about this Mayor Vecchi and President Zanni, as well as the left-wing media, so as not to “dirty” an electoral campaign that already promises to be no-holds-barred with hot topics.
Pierluigi Ghiggini
