When anti-mafia police swooped on the Sicilian mob on Tuesday, their primary goal was to cease them regrouping and creating a brand new governing physique or cupola.
However what has emerged from their wide-ranging investigation is an organised crime group having to adapt to fashionable realities and displaying a nostalgia for the loftier ambitions of the previous.
They do not produce mobsters like they used to, Giancarlo Romano advised an affiliate in a wiretapped dialog earlier than he was shot lifeless a yr in the past.
Regardless of its evident craving for crimes of the previous, the Mafia in Sicily continues to be a pressure to be reckoned with, warns anti-mafia prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia: “Cosa nostra is alive and current.”
Investigators have revealed that the brand new technology of gang bosses have taken to utilizing encrypted cell phones and 1000’s of short-life micro-sim playing cards smuggled into prisons.
This fashion they sought to keep away from being eavesdropped as they centered their actions on drug crime, money-laundering and on-line playing.
Sicily’s Cosa Nostra has even began working with different gangs, together with the infamous and much bigger ‘Ndrangheta in mainland Italy.
Of the 181 arrest warrants served on suspected Sicilian gangsters throughout 4 districts of the in capital Palermo, 33 have been for convicted figures already in jail.
Nationwide anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Melillo mentioned that, regardless of all of the crackdowns, the high-security jail system was on the mercy of the mob.
The inquiry revealed that one gangster had been capable of watch a beating he had ordered from inside jail in actual time by way of video-link.
The Mafia turned supremely assured concerning the encrypted messaging platform it was utilizing, which featured text-messages, voice notes and pictures.
However a yr in the past a bug put in within the residence of 1 gangster recorded him and one other man complaining concerning the connection taking place on an encrypted chat. As they tried to revive the hyperlink, the names of a number of Mafia figures have been talked about out loud.
Sicily’s authorities heard each phrase.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni praised the operation by Italy’s Carabinieri navy police and promised that the struggle in opposition to the Mafia “has not stopped and won’t cease”.
Half of these arrested are of their 20s and 30s.
In late 2023, Giancarlo Romano, thought-about an up-and-coming Mafia determine within the Brancaccio space within the coronary heart of Sicily’s capital, Palermo, was recorded complaining concerning the decline of the mob and poor high quality of latest recruits.
“The extent is low, immediately they arrest somebody and if he turns into a turncoat they arrest one other… wretched low-level,” he was quoted as saying over his wiretapped cellphone.
He was overheard telling an aspiring mafioso to go to high school, meet docs and legal professionals, and be taught classes from watching The Godfather trilogy of movies concerning the fictional Corleone gangster household.
As we speak’s Mafia was happy with promoting small bars of cannabis whereas others have been now transferring in, he complained: “Again within the day, these individuals who sadly ended up in jail for all times… they did it due to a shipload of hash was imagined to arrive.”
Romano was killed and his affiliate wounded in February 2024, in an assault apparently linked to on-line playing extortion. That homicide led authorities to make additional arrests inside Romano’s department of the Mafia.
Cosa nostra is a shadow of the infamous organised crime mob it as soon as was, introduced down by a wave of campaigns by authorities prior to now 30 years.
However regardless of the drive for a extra modernised mob, most of the outdated practices and codes stay.
“Cosa nostra is like marriage. You might be married to this spouse and also you keep along with her all of your life,” one mafioso was overheard saying.
The clear implication was there was no leaving the Cosa nostra.
