The report on the activities carried out and results achieved by the company has been published Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate In the first half of 2023presented by Interior Ministerand relating to the analysis of mafia-type organized crime phenomena in the first half of 2023.
Compared to previous versions, the structure has been profoundly innovated in order to make it more accessible to read and allow for more immediate and rapid consultation. In the same direction, another important innovation was created by inserting, alongside the Report, a “Summary”, aimed at quickly grasping the essential lines of the work, while still leaving the possibility of delving into the detailed aspects in the complete version.
The analysis of the info-investigative elements extracted from the information assets of the DIA returns a scenario of Italian organized crime which confirms how the mafia organisations, which have long begun a process of adaptation to the mutability of the socio-economic contexts and to the advantageous penetration of the entrepreneurial sectors, have implemented relational skills by replacing the use of violence, always more residual but never repudiated, with silent infiltration strategies and corrupt actions. This is demonstrated, on the one hand, by the numerous law enforcement investigations conducted in the context of the hoarding of contracts and public services by mafia associations and, on the other, by the murders committed in mafia contexts, especially in the Campania and Apulia areas, and the seizures of weapons also carried out this semester.
In this context, the use of technology plays a decisive role in the illicit activity of criminal organizations, which increasingly use encrypted communication systems, multiple instant messaging applications and social media. From the results of the investigations concluded in the semester, it emerges that the main source of profitability of criminal cartels, at a transnational level, continues to be the trafficking of narcotic substances, sometimes managed through new organizational models capable of exploiting the web, especially in the sales phase. This aspect of “internationalisation” manifests itself at all levels, even in the retail sales activity, in some cases delegated to foreign laborers for merely “executive” tasks.
At a strategic level, this international propensity of the associations is expressed through the ability to forge relationships with the major foreign drug traffickers to activate new supply channels for drug shipments. Also significant are the signs of the inclusion of cliques in the management of public bodies which alters the good performance of the public administration. In this regard, although limited to specific areas of the south, there was no shortage of dissolution measures due to mafia infiltration of 3 municipal administrations in Sicily, 2 in Calabria and 1 in Pugliademonstrating how the southern territorial context is still more permeable.
