Mar 29 2008
The great Mafia mozzarella scandal
The great Mafia mozzarella scandal.mp3
Runs in the family: Salvatore Lo Piccolo, who is believed to be the Sicilian Mafia’s ‘boss of bosses’, was arrested with his son Alessandro in Palermo last November. Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro, inset, tucks into some buffalo mozzarella
The innocent Italian housewife could be funding the Mafia with the staples of her shopping basket — olive oil, Parma ham and mozarella cheese. The worn-out worker who treats himself to a beer after a hard week may be drinking a product brewed by the Mob.
The omnipresent Mafia has subtly infiltrated some unexpected sectors of Italy’s economy, forcing unsuspecting consumers to contribute towards organised crime.
Even the previously whiter-than-white Italian food and beverage industry has been tainted.
“It’s true that the Mafia is now involved in food manufacture,” confirmed a spokesperson for the Italian small business association, Confesercenti.
That organisation named the Mafia as Italy’s biggest business in a recent hard-hitting report. With an extraordinary €90 billion a year turnover, the Mob leaves legitimate Italian companies like car manufacturer Fiat trailing in its financial wake.
While the mainstream Italian economy may be in the doldrums, with foreign firms sometimes unwilling to invest because of illegal activities, business appears to be booming for the indigenous Mafia Inc. For generations, small-time Italian shopkeepers, bakers and coffee bar-owners have been regularly handing over a portion of their earnings to the Mafia in ‘protection’ money.
These payments can now be as much as €444 a month in Sicily, where eight in every 10 small businesses cough up to the Mob, according to Confesercenti.
Low-level 1940s-style extortion rackets against powerless family enterprises in the under-developed south continue to bring in regular cash, but the modern Mafia has moved with the times.
Confesercenti’s analysts claim even national construction companies and stock-market listed conglomerates with head- quarters in Milan are paying off mobsters these days. Parting with some ‘hush money’ is seen as a better option than attracting the adverse publicity that would accompany a story linking the business to the Mafia. Spokes- people for the companies actually named in the report denied the charges.
The Mafia’s continued existance is a fact of life in today’s Italy. And it has a discreet but inescapable impact on the day-to-day lives of ordinary law-abiding Italians. From the quality of their mobile phone coverage to the efficiency or otherwise of their rubbish disposal — the Mafia may be hovering in the background.
The boss of a mobile phone company troubled with patchy reception in the south of the country has complained about Mafia interference. “In some parts of the south the company has not been able to build antennas because they demand a pizzo — and I don’t want to pay it,” he said. The role of the so-called ‘Eco-Mafia’ in the rubbish management crisis in Naples, where local Mob branches often control waste disposal, has been well-documented.
Now a food scare has linked one of Italy’s most prestigious cheese products, buffalo mozzarella, with the crisis. Fears that feed given to buffalo herds was contaminated by dioxins was denied by the authorities, but Japan suspended imports anyway.
Meanwhile, the ‘Agro-Mafia’ pulls in €7.5 billion euro a year — driving legitimate participants in Italy’s food production sector to despair. The farmers’ union, Coldiretti, has claimed the Mafia has relabelled flavoured rapeseed oil and sold it as olive oil.
The Mafia is also suspected of involvement in illegal fishing, especially of endangered bluefin tuna. Truckloads of hams branded with fake ‘Parma’ trademarks are regularly seized by the authorities. Beer is brewed using outlawed genetically modified ingredients.
While there seems little chance of the State bringing the Mob to its knees any time soon, Italian police have struck significant blows lately, bringing in a number of long-time fugitives.
The Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in Naples, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia have all suffered in recent months. Among the high-profile figures arrested just last month were Pasquale Condello, purportedly a Calabrian Mafia leader and the alleged Neapolitan boss Vincenzo Licciardi.
One powerful weapon in the police armoury is to make the Mafia look foolish in front of local people, who have got used to living with a certain level of fear of Mafiosi.
This was put to good use when godfather Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the Sicilian Mafia’s ‘boss of bosses’, was arrested in Palermo at the end of last year. Humiliating photographs of a handcuffed Lo Piccolo flanked by male and female police officers were released.
Investigators went on to reveal that the Mafia has its own version of the Ten Commandments: It was reported that a list of ‘moral guidelines’ for Mafiosi was found in a brown leather briefcase carried around by Lo Piccolo.
In the document, Mob members were instructed not to go to bars or clubs, never to look at the wives of ‘friends’ and to treat their own wives with respect.
One regulation stated: “Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty — even if your wife’s about to give birth.”
Tight restrictions about who can join Cosa Nostra were detailed. No-one with a policeman or a even a “two-timing relative” in the family was welcome.
The word ‘respect’ featured heavily. Existing members could not even talk to each other unless they have been formally introduced by ‘another of our friends’.
According to the ‘Commandments’, the Mob also valued punctuality: ‘Appointments must absolutely be respected’.
The list of regulations on personal conduct may have indicated a desire by senior mafia figures to encourage a move away from the ‘Goodfellas’-style extravagant behaviour of flamboyant young mobsters.
The great Mafia mozzarella scandal – By Mary Minihan – Saturday March 29 2008 – http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/the-great-mafia-mozzarella-scandal-1331675.html
