WEB BUZZ MAFIA

ROME — Italy ’s confused election campaign took another twist Friday with the country ’s respected national anti-Mafia prosecutor joining ranks with the center-left Democratic Party , a big-name boost for a party that is already leading in the polls ahead of the February vote . A day earlier, Premier Mario Monti got an even bigger endorsement for his potential candidacy from the Vatican newspaper after winning a not-so-subtle thumbs up from the pope himself on Christmas Day . Almost left behind in the jockeying was Italy ’s most colorful politician , Silvio Berlusconi , who was on the front pages of Italy ’s leading daily Friday for an entirely other reason. Corriere della Sera revealed details of his divorce settlement with his second wife Veronica Lario , showing that he must pay her €3 million ($4 million) a month. He gets to keep the house, however. Italians vote Feb. 24-25 in general elections after a yearlong experiment with Monti ’s technocratic governmen...

Wind energy company held in Valletta fiduciary company targeted by Palermo investigators hunting Mafia boss of bosses. Matteo Massimo Denaro identikit . Sicilian anti-mafia judges have issued a freezing order on assets and money registered under a Valletta-based company which investigations have revealed to be connected to one of the world 's most wanted mafia bosses , Matteo Messina Denaro . Known to be the current ' boss of bosses' to Sicily 's notorious ' Cosa Nostra ', Denaro was always considered to be the Mafia 's most prolific financial brain , who invested and laundered billions of drug and extortion money all over the world, including Malta on various occasions. On the run for the past 25 years, Denaro has this week hit the headlines in Italy for his connections to the highly lucrative sector of renewable energy . Months of investigations in Palermo have yielded Denaro 's links to Sicily 's wind farm energy...

ITALIAN mafiosi have been pocketing hundreds of thousands of euros from European farm funds for years thanks to a legal loophole, according to rulings from Italy's Court of Auditors. Convicted gangsters and suspects under police surveillance were able to receive Common Agricultural Policy payments of up to €153000 without triggering more in-depth controls on their criminal history. "Until two months ago we didn't even have a list of mafiosi to check against when making payments," said Giancarlo Nanni, director of Agea, the Italian government agency that handles European agriculture funding. Court rulings demanding that the funds be returned to the state showed that payments of more than €2-million had been made over nearly two decades, including to mafiosi who were in prison at the time. Around €1.8-million was distributed in Sicily alone, where there were dozens of rulings against "farmers" for illegally obtaining public funds. Under...

Beijing: An ex-lawyer who said he was wrongfully persecuted as part of a massive crime crackdown by China's purged politician Bo Xilai this week filed a complaint with China's highest prosecuting office. The former defence lawyer, Li Zhuang, is demanding a thorough investigation of his case, which has raised questions about how Bo ruled Chongqing a metropolis in China's southwest as its party chief until his downfall in March.  China's top government prosecuting office said on its website today that it had received Li's petition and will handle his complaint according to procedure. Li was detained in 2009 after his client Gong Gangmo, a Chongqing businessman swept into Bo's anti-mafia campaign because he was suspected of gang crimes, alleged that the defence lawyer had instigated him to lie about being tortured for confession. Li, who spent 18 months in jail, has said Gong framed him under duress of Chongqing police. Li has been appealing his c...

NAPLES, Italy, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Italian police Thursday scoured sewers in central Naples for drugs and seized $6 million in property in Cantanzaro in operations against mafias , officials said. Police divers scoured sewers in central Naples for drugs and arms belonging to the Camorra, Italy's ANSA news agency reported. Police said they also dismantled "defense systems" in districts such as Scampia. In Cantanzaro, police seized more than $6 million in property allegedly belonging to members of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. Police said that the seized property belongs to the imprisoned Limbadi clan head Antonio Mancuso, 73, and to Domenico Campisi, who was killed in June 2011.

Hot property: the survival of the 1,600 businesses confiscated from the Mafia , many of which are in Palermo, above, depends on deploying skills and judgment such as recognising that local people may depend on them for jobs If running a large hotel in the middle of a financial crisis and a shrinking market sounds difficult, try pulling it off when the 14-storey building has been confiscated from the Mafia . “Call it fearlessness or perhaps stupidity, I’m not sure which it was, but I took this on as I would any other job,” says Luigi Turchio, the soft-spoken court-appointed administrator of the San Paolo Palace hotel and conference centre in Sicily . Intimidation from the local crime boss and finding that the crime boss’s mistress was on the staff are just a few of the challenges Mr Turchio has faced in the 19 years since a court appointed him to manage the 283-room hotel on the edge of the Mafia -infested Brancaccio neighbourhood of Palermo, the Sicilian capital...

Champion of the south ... Rosario Crocetta is congratulated as the results of the election come in. ROME: A gay man who shrugged off three mafia plots to kill him is poised to become Sicily's first homosexual governor in elections that show the centre left advancing at the expense of Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing party. Representing a coalition of Italy's centre-left Democratic Party and the Catholic UDC party, Rosario Crocetta is leading against the candidate of Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) and a contender representing the maverick movement of the comedian Beppe Grillo, who trailed in third place. After leaving prison in England, Oscar Wilde took refuge in Palermo.   With more than 50 per cent of votes counted, Mr Crocetta had 30.88 per cent of the vote, ahead of the PDL’s Sebastiano Musumeci with 24.90 per cent, robbing him of what was once the centre-right’s stronghold on the Mediterranean island.The outsi...

The openly gay, anti-mafia campaigner Rosario Crocetta took 31 per cent of the votes Former bastion of homophobia has overtaken north on equality, says Milanese newspaper. The stereotype of the macho southern Italian is fading fast. To the amusement of commentators in northern Italy, the victor in Sicily's regional election on Sunday was the openly gay, anti-mafia campaigner Rosario Crocetta. One of the oddest regional elections in recent times reflected the turbulent state of Italian politics. Apart from a gay winner in deeply conservative Sicily, the centre-right received a drubbing, almost half the population abstained, and the enormous protest vote will see dozens of people in the Five Star Movement, with no political experience, take up councillor seats in Palermo's Palazzo dei Normanni. Mr Crocetta, 61, who has an armed-escort because of his high-profile campaign against Cosa Nostra, said his victory meant "the Mafia can back its bags". The outg...

In Palermo, police arrested 41 suspected members of the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian branch of the Italian mafia, on Tuesday. They are accused of involvement in extorsion, drug trafficking, illegal possession of firearms and other crimes. The producers of a television series filmed in Palermo were among the victims of the suspects, as well as businessmen and shopkeepers, police said, adding that several mafia-owned betting shops were raided in the same operation. In Turin, a judge ordered the arrest of 22 suspected members of the Ndrangheta, the branch of the mafia rooted in the southern region of Calabria but also present in the north of Italy, and the seizure of assets worth several million euros. The judge, Giuseppe Salerno, said that the Ndrangheta had managed to influence the result of last year's local elections in Chivasso, a town on the outskirts of Turin. According to investigators, the Ndrangheta controlled the votes of the third-placed candidate in the...