Aug 21 2007
Restaurants unite to fight mafia
The refined Italian restaurant setting of elegant wooden tables decked with white tablecloths jarred with the meeting’s gruesome purpose – to condemn mafia killings in Germany.
Germany’s Italian community had been “shaken to the core” by the mafia murder last Wednesday of six Italians in Duisburg, western Germany, declared Pino Bianco, owner of one of the 17 Italian restaurants that convened the anti-mafia press conference in Bread and Roses, an upmarket Italian eatery in east Berlin.
“We cannot return to business as usual,” he said, before adding his support to the restaurateurs’ campaign to reject mafia pressure to pay protection money. It has also been set up to express solidarity with more humble pizza parlours, which have suffered income losses of up to 30 per cent since the killings, Mr Bianco said.
“Customers have been scared, fearing that all Italians are mafia – which is not true,” said Laura Garavini, Germany co-ordinator of UIM, a network of overseas Italians, and co-ordinator of the campaign, which issues stickers to restaurants and other Italian businesses declaring them “mafia-free zones”. “This action brings with it dangers,” Ms Garavini stressed, pointing to a similar campaign in Sicily, where some of the restaurants displaying such stickers had been burnt down by the mafia.
The restaurant owners acknowledged that the killings in Duisburg – traced by investigators to a feud within the Calabrian mafia – confirmed long-held fears among organised crime experts that the mafia had spread to Germany. “The mafia has become a globalised force,” said Angelo Bolaffi, director of Berlin’s Italian cultural institute.
Police in Duisburg said they were following 250 leads offered by the public in order to find the two alleged killers involved in the attacks. Günther Beckstein, Bavaria’s interior minister said Germany was “seriously threatened” by mafia-based crime gangs, which experts say are involved in drugs and money-laundering, especially in western Germany.
Germany has also become a base for mafia members who have fled Italy. Police point to a number of arrests of alleged mafia killers in the country in recent years, although legal experts argue that strict rules on evidence useable in court make it more difficult to achieve convictions in Germany.
On their part, the Berlin restaurateurs, several of whom have lived in Germany for decades, said they had never had contact with the mafia. They criticised media reports suggesting 30 per cent of pizza restaurants were mafia-controlled. “Maybe 3 per cent is a more accurate figure,” said a representative of an Italian business association in Berlin.
Mr Bolaffi concluded that in order to keep the mafia in check, Italian and German police needed to co-operate better. “At present the mafia simply reacts quicker than the state,” he said.
Restaurants unite to fight mafia - By Hugh Williamson in Berlin - Published: August 21 2007 20:05 - Financial Times Limited 2007 - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/124a4694-5013-11dc-a6b0-0000779fd2ac.html
