WEB BUZZ MAFIA

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...

ITALY’S financial capital is nothing like Reggio Calabria. Yet when Reggio’s city council was dissolved early last month, Milanese prosecutors promptly arrested Lombardy’s head of housing, Domenico Zambetti, on accusations of aiding subsidiaries of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. The police had already arrested 37 ’Ndrangheta suspects in Lombardy. In the number of confiscations of firms and properties in 2010 and 2011, Lombardy lags behind only the southern regions, which are far better known for the mafia . “The mafia has always been here. What we’re now seeing is evolution, with organised crime increasingly acquiring legitimate businesses,” says Claudio Gittardi, one of 12 prosecutors in Milan’s anti-mafia team. Alberto Barcella, chairman of Confindustria Lombardia, the local business association, says members do not always know what they are up against. “ Mafiosi work subtly. They wear jackets and ties, don’t carry shotguns,” he says. Nando d...

Wealthy Russians, including mafiosi , would most benefit from an EU bailout to Cyprus, Der Spiegel magazine reported Monday, quoting a German intelligence agency report. "The BND report shows who will profit most from the billions in European taxpayer funds -Russian oligarchs, businesspeople and mafiosi who have parked their illegal earnings in Cyprus," the magazine said. The magazine reported that a large number of Russian businessmen have placed large sums of money in Cypriot banks, attracted by lower tax rates, even if Cyprus has shed its reputation as a tax haven since joining the EU in 2004. In total, around €20 billion ($26 billion) was deposited in Cyprus in 2011 by Russian oligarchs, which is more than the island nation's gross domestic product of €17.8 billion, the BND report found. These deposits will be guaranteed if a European bailout is approved to shore up the island's banks. The BND, Germany's federal intelligence service, also ...

History The genesis of Cosa Nostra is hard to trace because mafiosi are very secretive and do not keep historical records of their own. In fact, they have been known to spread deliberate lies about their past, and sometimes come to believe in their own myths. Post-feudal Sicily Modern scholars believe that its seeds were planted in the upheaval of Sicily's transition out of feudalism in 1812 and its later annexation by mainland Italy in 1860. Under feudalism, the nobility owned most of the land and enforced law and order through their private armies. After 1812, the feudal barons steadily sold off or rented their lands to private citizens. Primogeniture was abolished, land could no longer be seized to settle debts, and one fifth of the land was to become private property of the peasants. After Italy annexed Sicily in 1860, it redistributed a large share of public and church land to private citizens. The result was a huge boom in landowners: from 2,000 in 1812 to 20,000 ...

The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra ) is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering. Each group, known as a "family", "clan", or " cosca ", claims sovereignty over a territory in which it operates its rackets – usually a town or village or a neighbourhood ( borgata ) of a larger city. Its members call themselves "men of honour", although the public often refers to them as " mafiosi ". According to the classic definition, the Mafia is a criminal organization originating in Sicily. However, the term "mafia" has become a generic term for any organized criminal network with similar structure, methods, and interests.   Sketch of the 1901 maxi trial of suspected mafiosi in Palermo. From the newspaper L'Ora, May ...