Jul 18 2007
Notorious Mobster to Testify at German Trial
“It never comes good on its promises,” he said. “It lures young men with promises of power, money and women. It uses them, then kills them as though they were ants.”
Basile has said he lives with the knowledge that the Mafia will hunt him down and kill him. “The Mafia bosses are behind bars because of what I did,” he told Ulrich. “They can‘t do anything to me any more, but their sons will avenge them.”
Eighteen months ago, he told the online version of German news magazine Der Spiegel that the Mafia’s influence was stronger than ever.
“The Mafia will continue to expand,” he said. “The enlarged Europe will allow it to spread even further. For someone with the same criminal energy as I had, it’s even easier in Germany than it is in Italy. You can get away with anything.”
Basile said the German authorities had failed to recognize the extent of the criminal energy that exists within the underground Italian community.
“I couldn’t put a figure to it, but Germany is home to many sleepers. Go in to any pizzeria and you might find the cook is a hitman just waiting for a call,” he said.
The mob in Germany
The extent of mob influence is definitely underestimated in Germany, said Mafia expert Jürgen Roth.
“When Berlusconi was in power there was very little information coming out of Italy,” he explained. “The Mafia took the opportunity to get a foothold in Germany. There is now barely any knowledge of the Mafia’s criminal structures here. It is active mainly in the area of money laundering, drug and weapons trading, protection racketeering and prostitution.”
While the biggest ‘Ndrangheta presence is in eastern German states such as Thuringia and Saxony, Roth says Cosa Nostra has a higher profile in Baden-Württemberg, where CDU state premier Günther Oettinger has even been accused of ties to a leading ‘Ndrangheta member. The state’s premier between 1978 and 1980, Lothar Späth, was also accused of contacts to Mafia kingpin Vito Palazollo, Cosa Nostra’s top money launderer.
Earlier this month, Italy’s leading Mafia hunter, Piero Grasso, warned Germany in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung daily that the mob was even beginning to penetrate legitimate business circles in Germany.
“The size and profit potential of German markets, as well as German law, makes the country highly attractive to organized criminals,” he said. “Their goal is to infiltrate legal financial circles in order to invest illegally gained funds with a long-term aim of dominating price wars and creating monopolies.”
Notorious Mobster to Testify at German Trial – Jane Paulick | www.dw-world.de | http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_printcontent/0,,2695429,00.html
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