The half-yearly report of the anti-mafia investigative directorate (Dia) has been published, presented in Rome by the top management of the body and by Minister Piantedosi. The report, with the data relating to the various anti-mafia activity in the first 6 months of 2023provides a scenario of Italian organized crime which confirms how the mafia organisations, which have long begun a process of adaptation to the mutability of socio-economic contexts and the advantageous penetration of business sectors, have implemented relational skills by replacing the use of violence, increasingly residual, but never completely repudiated, with silent infiltration strategies and corrupt actions.
In Tuscany there is less and less Sicilian Cosa Nostra and more and more ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra who manage various criminal activities in the region, primarily drug trafficking.
Drugs and money laundering
According to the Dia, organized crime in general in Tuscany, in addition to drug trafficking, is also dedicated to extortion and predatory crimes, especially by Albanians, Romanians, Chinese, Maghrebians and North Africans in general, who make use of the “labour” of needy or irregular individuals on the national territory when necessary.
The illicit activities of Camorra groups found in recent periods are mainly concentrated in the sectors of extortion committed against subjects originating from Campania and Tuscany, in the traffic management and illicit waste disposal, from drug trafficking to money laundering and re-employment in real estate or entrepreneurial activities with particular reference to the tourism-hotel sector.
The operations of the ‘Ndrangheta clans continue to be evident in the territory of Tuscany, as confirmed by the investigative activities conducted in past periods, mainly in the field of extortion, drug trafficking, illicit waste disposal and tax fraud.
Maximum alert for Pnrr funds
The National Recovery and Resilience Plan represents an important package of investments and reforms currently being implemented. Precisely because of the high overall value of the financing involved, there is a risk that mafia organizations may express interest in these funds, increasing the phenomenon of infiltration into the legal economy.
In the context of monitoring public procurement and financing related to the Pnrr, anti-mafia checks they represent a crucial phase of the institutional system to protect the socio-economic fabric. Collaboration with the Dia and the shared use of databases are essential to evaluate and deepen the information obtained through the interrogation of different sources.
Among the regions of central Italy, Tuscany requested in the first 6 months of 2023 681 anti-mafia checks in the various regional Prefecturesfor various projects, second only to Lazio with 3427 requests, many of which are still in the evaluation and analysis phase.
Public procurement
As regards public procurement in general, Dia carries out constant monitoring of the companies involved in the construction of works, in the supply of goods and in the provision of services and in the first months of 2023 it inspected 12 construction sites.
The “modern” mafias are, in fact, similar to dangerous corporate trusts that pollute the legal economy, very often resorting to violence and the use of illicitly accumulated capital, and the Tuscany region has been a territory of conquest for years. I am 10 anti-mafia interdictions issued by the Prefectures in Tuscany against companies operating in the public sector, in the first 6 months of last year alone. And finally the DIA also monitors the so-called “suspicious banking transactions”, which in the region are around 6% of the total. All activities which therefore aim not only at repression but also at the prevention of various mafia-related phenomena in Tuscany as in the rest of Italy.
