“Dirty money made from criminal gangs is being invested right across Europe in completely legal businesses,” Francisco Forgione said.

His comments came on the day Germany and Italy signed a pact creating a joint task force to combat international crime syndicates.

That accord, focusing on Italian mafia drug trafficking and extortion rackets in Germany, was sparked by the brutal gangland-style slaying of six Italians in Germany this summer.

The six men were shot dead by unidentified assailants in a pizza restaurant in the western city of Duisburg in August.

“Those men weren’t there to manage pizzerias, but to make large-scale investments in the Germany economy and also in Gazprom, the Russian energy giant,” Forgione said.

He warned that Italian criminal gangs — the Sicilian ‘Ndrangheta and the Camorra from Naples — are becoming “really important financiers, who know how to profit from globalisation.”

“There was always dirty money, made from drug trafficking and guns, handling toxic waste and people-trafficking and other rackets,” he said.

But now the gangs have found better ways of laundering their huge profits: in public construction projects, in tourism, in real estate, in industrial parks and shopping centres have become the new favoured investment areas, from the Cote d’Azur, to Milan, Palermo and the Canary Islands, he said.

And Forgione warned that there is now a “bourgeois mafia” comprised of lawyers, financiers, politicians and local councillors “without whom the money could not be laundered.”

Europe-wide laws have struggled to keep up with the scale of the challenge, said Forgione. “For example, the some of the new offences we have created in Italy don’t exist elsewhere — especially in France.”

Italy has good laws, Forgione said — the problem is implementing them in the face of the historic network of ties between corrupt lawmakers and the mafia.

Mafia are EUR 150 billion financial giants: parliamentarian – 12 December 2007, 22:59 CET – AFP – http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1197489721.96

Why are we asking this question now?

Six Italian men who worked at a pizzeria in the north German industrial city of Duisburg were shot dead outside their restaurant at 2 o’clock on Wednesday morning. They were affiliated to one branch of the ‘ndrangheta, the criminal organisation based in Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. Investigators believe their killers belonged to another clan in the same organisation. The two clans, which come from the same village, have been engaged in a bloody feud since 1991.

Why where they killed?

On Christmas Eve last year, Maria Strangio Nirta, the wife of the godfather Giovanni Nirta, was shot dead on her doorstep. Police believe that the principal target in yesterday’s massacre was a man called Marco Marmo, 25, who was under investigation by the police for alleged involvement in that murder. By committing the massacre on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, a religious holiday almost as important in Italy as Christmas, they enjoyed their revenge dish both cold and symmetrical.

Do atrocities of this sort happen frequently?

Yes, but not outside Italy. Italian experts say it is unprecedented for the ‘ndrangheta to pursue a blood feud beyond the borders of Italy. The feud between the two families, the Strangio-Nirta and the Pelle-Romano, has been under way for 16 years, but till now all the attacks have been confined to the village of San Luca, where the two families are based.

Is the ‘ndrangheta the same as the Sicilian Mafia?

No. The two organisations are only separated by a few kilometres and the Strait of Messina, but while Cosa Nostra is a unified organisation with a capo di capi (“boss of bosses”) and fiercely imposed collective discipline, the ‘ndrangheta functions differently. “The various clans are autonomous,” says the Mafia historian John Dickie of the Calabrian organisation. “They have held regular meetings since the 19th century to settle differences, but they are far more anarchic than the Sicilian Mafia, much more like families with guns. They have no mechanism for imposing collective discipline.”

How did it come by this name?

One explanation is that it derives from a Greek word for virility or courage. There is also an old word for this part of Italy that might be behind the term.

Why haven’t we heard much of them before?

Until the day before yesterday they were the soul of discretion, “invisible”, as one Italian put it, “like the dark side of the moon”. But also because in the popular imagination, especially outside Italy, the Mafia is so closely identified with the island of Sicily. Despite the anarchic tendencies mentioned above, the ‘ndrangheta have grown rapidly richer over the last couple of decades without drawing attention to themselves in the theatrically violent manner of Cosa Nostra, which provoked unprecedented state retaliation 15 years ago after a string of high-profile assassinations.

What are they doing in Germany?

Running restaurants such as Da Bruno, the scene of Wednesday’s atrocity. (One of the restaurant’s owners, a Calabrian like all the victims, said the following day, “I curse the land of my birth.”) Italians from the impoverished south emigrated in huge numbers to the Ruhr coalfield and other industrial areas of Germany, Belgium, Holland and France after the war to work. They sank roots in the area and hundreds of Calabrian families still live in Duisburg today. And quietly but persistently the criminal gangs followed them, battening on their co-nationals like lice, communicating in dialect, shaking down Italian businesses for protection money just like they did back home.

Is protection money still their main source of income?

By no means. Calabria has become Europe’s most important source of illegal cocaine, with 80 per cent of the trade supposedly passing through the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro. Italian secret services believe that thanks to cocaine and heroin and other booming businesses such as arms trafficking, the Calabrians are now the richest and most powerful of the criminal syndicates, outstripping both Cosa Nostra and the Camorra network based in Naples.

Their international business brings in a turnover of some €40bn per year, equivalent to 3.5 per cent of Italy’s gross domestic product. This is where the foreign friends come in handy: drug money is meaningless without an outlet in the legal economy, and the Calabrians have been working hard to penetrate the socio-economic fabric of the cities where their fellow-countrymen have settled.

Starting as a marginal, parasitic, intimidatory presence they use their vast wealth to muscle into real estate, hotel and restaurant businesses, all of which facilitate the laundering of drug money. It has been helped in this endeavour by the lack of pubic awareness of the ‘ndrangheta’s existence. As a report by the Italian secret services to parliament spelled out earlier this year: “It is precisely the low visibility of the ‘ndrangheta, and their lack of impact in the media, that has enabled them to stay out of reach of the authorities, because they do not set off alarm bells. In this way the Mafia power systems seek to infiltrate and silently consolidate their territorial and social denomination.”

Where else are they strong?

They have close ties with gangs in the Balkans, especially the Albanians, as well as in other parts of Eastern Europe. They have cordial business relations with criminal gangs in Turkey, from which they import heroin, the South American gangs from which they source cocaine, and are strong in the Italian immigrant communities in Australia and Canada. They are also flourishing in in northern Italy.

Everywhere they operate they are turning increasingly white collar. Drug money fuels their growth and expansion, but it dictates that they must muscle into legitimate business so they can launder the proceeds. For example their involvement in public works contracts in southern Italy, a very traditional Mafia speciality, now extends beyond providing dummy sub-contractors and a pliable workforce: now, say the secret services: “They also aim to infiltrate and occupy the administrative structure in the road-building programme, giving them the power of direct intervention and management.”

And their ambition spreads inexorably to the more prosperous Italian north. The mayor of a town near Milan who recently banned Calabrian firms from bidding for public building projects in his area received a Happy Easter card containing a bullet, and had his car set on fire.

Was the Assumption Day Massacre a good business move?

Terrible: in one brief orgy of violence, decades of stealthy infiltration by the ‘ndrangheta has been undone. Most Germans had never heard of them before: Germany has been profoundly shaken by the attack and can be expected to give Mafia-related businesses a hard time.

What can to be done to stop them?

San Luca has been flooded with Italian police since the killings. That won’t do any good: the killers waited more than six months to take revenge, and the next act could be an equally long time coming. Further afield, anti-terrorism legislation that makes the movements of funds far more difficult may cramp the style of all the Mafia clans. But in places like Duisburg they are so well entrenched that they will be hard to winkle out.

The Big Question: Has the Italian mafia spread its tentacles throughout Europe? – By Peter Popham, Rome Correspondent – Published: 17 August 2007 – http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2871461.ece

150 police officers in 40 raids were carried out across Belgium, France, Italy and Luxembourg as authorities are investigation EU contracts linked to criminal organisations, including the Italian mafia.

The homes of European Commission officials, personnel in banks and companies as well as the offices of two Italian MEPs were raided as the police try to uncover the alleged involvement of the mafia in EU contracts worth millions of Euros.

The contracts in question were for buildings to house European Commission delegations in France, Italy and Luxembourg and the installation of security equipment in the offices.

British newspaper The Guardian reported that twelve of the raids were carried out by the Italian Carabinieri and one official, Laurence Wittek, said: “The investigation is about two Italian members of the European Parliament suspected to have ties with the Mafia.”

The European Parliament could not confirm this last night but said that one of those questioned yesterday was an MEP’s assistant.
A spokesman for Hans-Gert Pöttering, the President of the European Parliament, said: “Belgian police came to the Parliament to speak to a parliamentary assistant. The Parliament is giving the Belgian authorities every assistance with their inquiry.”

Together with local authorities, the investigations are being carried out by international police and the European Union’s anti-fraud branch.

“The investigation involves suspected bribery of European civil servants, forming a criminal organisation, violating professional secrecy, breaches of public tender laws and forgery,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

It concerned the award of tenders for European Commission “embassies” abroad and contracts for installing security systems for those offices, the statement said. “European Commission civil servants as well as the directors of companies that won tenders are suspected of being implicated in fraud.”

The raids come just days after the European Union celebrated 50 years, as the EU tries to crack down the illicit use of its mega-budget which totals around Lm52 billion.

The European Commission refused to confirm any details of those taken into custody. “Until the investigation is concluded and the facts are fully established, the presumption of innocence applies,” said Johannes Laitenberger, the Commission’s spokesman.

“The Commission is collaborating fully with the national authorities carrying out this inquiry in the interest of shedding full light on the allegations and suspicions that exist.

Brussels, Belgium 28 March 2007 http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msfullart.asp?an=10920

Dimitar Vuchev was driving with his wife in central Sofia when his Audi was riddled with bullets. Hours later, when Radoslav Velkov presented himself at a police station to answer questions about the morning’s events, a gunman was waiting to blast him in the head.

Both men survived but Bulgaria’s image took another hit.

In many ways, the country’s post-communist history is a success story with steady growth, a stable democracy and a booming tourist industry based on beautiful beaches and cheap skiing.

Visitors also enjoy Bulgaria’s beaches (Alamy)

It has, however, been blighted by rampant corruption and contract killings, as feuding gangs fight for control of the heroin route to Europe from Afghanistan, as well as a slice of the trade in illicit arms, prostitution and people-trafficking.

On Monday Bulgaria’s problems become Europe’s problems. Along with Romania, it completes the enlargement of the EU to include all the former Warsaw Pact countries except the Soviet Union, extending the community’s eastern frontier to the Black Sea.

Klaus Jansen, who analysed Bulgarian crime for the European Commission’s anti-fraud office, fears that Europe will be at risk of organised crime. “Crime bosses in Bulgaria will look for expats in other EU countries, just like the Italian Mafia does,” he said.

The British Government agrees. A leaked Cabinet Office memo last month said: “There is a concern that free movement will encourage people from Bulgaria and Romania to come to the UK, some of whom may be drawn towards organised criminal activities.”

Britain, along with most of the 15 “old” EU states, has imposed temporary restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian workers, but there will be nothing to stop the self-employed or tourists from travelling and, in any case, the criminals have not been waiting for January 1. Bulgarian godfathers already run prostitution rings in Brussels and Madrid, as well as organised car thefts across Spain, which is home to 100,000 Bulgarians and up to 550,000 Romanians.

But EU officials fear that the new member’s police will not be able to contain the drug-trafficking and people-smuggling (Reuters)

Mobster oligarchs are using EU membership to legitimise their activities, according Philip Gounev, of Sofia’s Centre for the Study of Democracy. “London is the richest city in Europe and there are criminals from all over the world working there, so some from Bulgaria will try their luck,” he said.

“But I do not see a wave of organised crime coming from Bulgaria. In the past three or four years, many of these guys went ‘legal’. You see construction along the sea coast and all these ski resorts — it is the same way they do it in the Costa del Sol, laundering money through construction.”

Senior police and politicians in Sofia admit privately that they lost control of their country to organised crime in the mid-1990s, when UN sanctions against Yugoslavia made smuggling petrol and weapons highly profitable. This, combined with hasty post-communist privatisations, led to the advent of Russian-style oligarchs — many of them former Olympic sportsmen and secret agents, who were the only people free to travel under communism.

The real challenge for Bulgaria now is to stamp out the corruption embedded by the years of gangsterism. The EU has set stringent targets and there are signs that the country is beginning to restore its image. An anti-corruption office was opened in March and the young Chief Prosecutor, Boris Velchev, has launched a series of high- profile cases, including charges against the head of the state heating company who allegedly transferred €1.6 million to personal bank accounts.

Valentin Petrov, a former science teacher who became chief of the Bulgarian police a year ago, is another of the new breed of law enforcers sick of his country’s reputation.

The number of mafia killings this year has fallen to just eight from an annual peak of 35, and Mr Petrov, who works closely with Scotland Yard, points out that the average murder rate is 2.2 per 100,000 people — below the EU average — and that the general crime rate is a fifth of that in Britain. “We are not an oasis of peacefulness but it would be wrong to present us like freaks or killers with 13th-century conditions,” he said.

Nonetheless, Scotland Yard is sufficiently concerned to deploy a team of detectives specialised in organised crime to try to block the flow of dirty money into the London property market and tackle people-trafficking networks.

Despite its 53 gun shops, Sofia does not feel like a city under siege from organised crime. About 400,000 British holidaymakers a year experience a very different country, and 1,200 liked it enough this year to apply for naturalisation. As Mr Petrov said: “The English are buying property in Bulgaria, so this shows that they feel safe and peaceful here.”

No job? Then please don’t come

Television and radio adverts warning of the dangers of working illegally in Britain are being broadcast in Romania and Bulgaria

The Government has spent £300,000 highlighting employment restrictions and the high cost of living

British authorities are also offering guidance on how to get jobs legally. The campaign includes a free hotline, a website, billboards and leaflets

The Home Office estimates that up to 140,000 Bulgarians and Romanians will travel to Britain next year, including up to 45,000 “undesirables”

Border controls have been strengthened and there will be greater use of technology to make sure passports and identity cards are genuine

The Home Office will not be able to deport Romanians or Bulgarians caught working illegally — even if they have been fined or jailed

| David Charter in Sofia – The Times December 30, 2006 – Times Newspapers Ltd. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2523486_2,00.html

A gunman with a silencer pumped several bullets into the wealthy businessman’s head and body as he stepped out of his car.

In this poor Balkan country set to join the European Union in January, this type of brazen slaying – along with gang shootouts and car and apartment bombings – have almost become part of the fabric of everyday life.

The EU let Bulgaria into the club largely because of its promise to crack down on organized crime, but it now looks on in horror as the accession date looms with no end in sight to the mafia-style killings.

Many people were walking by when Dimitrov, a 42-year-old former professional volleyball player, was killed on a late November evening. Yet no one has come forward to provide the police with details.

There have been more than 100 similar killings in Sofia in the past five years – a rate of almost two a month. Not a single killer has so far been convicted.

Police usually describe the slayings as “a settling of scores between businessmen,” often preceded by planting explosive devices under cars or doorsteps as a warnings.

The violence mirrors the atmosphere of lawlessness on the streets of Moscow in the early 1990s, when mafia-style hits on businessmen were a fact of life. The huge opportunities to make money that followed the Soviet collapse unleashed massive corruption and gangsterism.

In Bulgaria, drug trafficking has become a profitable criminal activity, with the State Department calling the country a key gateway for drugs into Europe.

For years, mafia bosses paraded around Bulgaria’s Black Sea resorts and upscale Sofia establishments, guarded by black-clad thugs. They have since become more discrete, but police and judicial corruption helps them remain untouchable.

A few days after Dimitrov’s murder, another businessman was shot to death on the street. Rumen Peshev, 55, was believed to have “close business ties” to Dimitrov, police said.

The wave of violence poses a serious challenge to Bulgaria’s police and courts, which the EU has criticized for inefficiency and widespread corruption.

The European Commission has repeatedly urged Bulgaria to gain the upper hand in its fight against organized crime, money laundering and high-level corruption before its scheduled entry into the bloc on Jan. 1.

Western officials also have warned that widespread corruption in Bulgaria could lead to misuse of $9.3 billion from EU funds the Balkan country is to receive by 2013.

In Sofia, officials insisted Bulgaria was making inroads against crime and corruption, hoping to persuade the Union not to impose “safeguard clauses” that would include not recognizing Bulgarian court decisions for up to two years.

But Klaus Jansen, an expert on organized crime and president of the German Union of Criminal Investigators, who prepared a report on Bulgaria for the European Commission earlier this year, said he feared it could take years for an honest police force to emerge in the country.

During the years following the collapse of communism in Bulgaria, he said, some officers continued to work for the government while others retired and helped establish a flourishing underworld.

Recently, Britain announced it would send detectives to Eastern Europe to bolster crime-fighting techniques, fearing that Bulgarian and Romanian gangs could exploit their countries’ EU memberships to export organized crime to the rest of the bloc.

A team of up to five officers from Scotland Yard was expected to travel to Sofia to advise their Bulgarian colleagues on EU crime-fighting techniques.

Bulgaria’s new chief prosecutor Boris Velchev said contract killings, drug smuggling, and human trafficking are still a problem for his country.

Velchev has hired a former Dutch prosecutor to help advise him and purge law enforcement officials who are lax or abuse their authority.

“We should have zero tolerance to corruption practices in all its forms – both low-level and high-level. Nobody should feel untouchable,” Velchev told journalists.

As EU membership nears, Bulgarians are unsure whether to cheer or dread what local media have called “the ultimate step toward freedom and democracy.”

Despite official optimism, the imminent membership has not removed doubts over how Bulgaria will adjust to the EU’s stiffer standards. Still, many have high expectations that law and order will prevail once the country becomes a member.

“We are obviously unable to clean up the mess at home,” said Albena Milanova, a 38-year-old school teacher. “But the European Union will make us do it.”

| By Veselin Toshkov ASSOCIATED PRESS 4:46 a.m. December 19, 2006 http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20061219-0446-bulgaria-organizedcrime.html

This attitude suggests several questions. Is this someone’s personal opinion, or do journalists reflect the “old” Europeans’ fatigue caused by the flood of the new EU members? If the latter is true, who’s the decision-maker in the democratic EU – its people or its bureaucrats?

I have always favored a strong Europe if only because I know what a US-led unipolar world is like. It is enough to recall the war in Iraq or CIA flying prisons. The voice of a strong and democratic Europe would be very appropriate here, but at first it has to gain enough political, economic, and military weight. The EU’s expansion is not an objectionable process, but I am amazed at how avidly Europe is swallowing one piece after another. It does not seem to be too concerned if the meal makes it stronger or fatter, or if it picks up some bacteria which will require a long and expensive treatment.

Thus, by integrating Latvia, the EU has taken on all its problems – neo-Nazism, Russophobia, and massive violations of human rights. Latvia is the only place in Europe with hundreds of thousands of non-citizens. International law does not even have such a term. These people cannot take part in the elections, and this is taking place in Europe!

The EU has also accepted the Poles. Polish arrogance was a subject of jokes even in the Middle Ages, so there is nothing new. As a result, under one president, Poland wanted to become the leader of new Europe, and led pro-American opposition on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, which makes it responsible, among others, for the death of innocent civilians in that country. Later on, it hosted one of the CIA’s main prisons. Finally, Poland has put all EU members into an awkward position by vetoing talks with Russia on future strategic partnership, thereby putting its meat exports ahead of the interests of the rest of Europe. To all intents and purposes, this is not the last Polish surprise.

But these are problems of the European condominium, and it should decide for itself whom to grant apartments in its building. However, Russia is watching this process with interest because several nations, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, for one, would also like to become part of Russia. Let’s put disputable legal issues aside and ask a very simple question – do we need it?

This is probably what my colleagues from The Sun meant by publishing alarming news about the arrival of the new mafia. Any Interpol official will tell you that the EU has enough headaches fighting the old one.

What lies in store for the EU in the new year? Browsing through the Internet, I have found nothing special on Bulgaria, but a lot of talk about the Romanian mafia. Here’s an excerpt from a Deutsche Welle report: “Using their contract on manpower supplies with Spain, Romanian criminals have quickly turned Madrid into their domain. Everything has happened very fast – in a matter of several years. The police reports that Romanians have ousted the ‘world famous’ Columbian Mafiosi, not to mention Spaniards themselves, from the criminal business of the Spanish capital. They have taken charge of synthetic drugs trafficking and prostitution, and are involved in robbery, and racketeering against their own compatriots residing in Spain, produce fake documents, and commit contract murders. Up to 500 Romanian prostitutes daily service clients in the Madrid Casa-del-Campo Park. Rivaling Romanian pimps get up to 200 Euros from a prostitute per day. The business is quite profitable, and shoot-outs take place at least once a week. The Mafiosi are particularly audacious in the area of Madrid’s southern railway station where buses with immigrants arrive. Dressed in Spanish police uniforms, they rob their compatriots of money and any valuables.”

This is just one of many examples. The French police are also having a hard time. In the summer of 2001, a group of Romanian children aged between 8 and 12 “landed” in Paris. The young pickpockets had been trained well, and showed what they were worth in Paris. The police believe that with their sensitive hands the children can feel what banknotes their victims have in their wallets. Usually, they attack Japanese and American tourists, because the former are loaded with cash, and the latter have valuable American passports, which are a sure sell on the black market. Incidentally, the vigilant police did not track a single adult Romanian in the vicinity of Trocadero – this is children’s domain. Experts estimate that every teenage thief stole up to 25,000 franks (about $4,000) per day. Nobody has seen these children buy something to eat, or be fed by someone. If caught, they pretended they knew no French (which might have been true). But what can the police do with them? Children under 13 are not punishable by law in France. Their parents can be punished instead. But where are the parents?

I have quoted enough. It seems my colleagues from The Sun have not exaggerated anything. The EU has eaten something bad again. Meanwhile, new claimants are knocking at its door, and all of them want to get to London, Paris, and Madrid.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board

| MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov) – 19:52 | 04/ 12/ 2006 http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20061204/56444601.html