Mafia-charity link in Italy migrant scam
Print Edition
ITALIAN mobsters took over the running of one of Europe’s largest migrant reception centers, using a Roman Catholic charity organization as a cover to cream off millions of euros in state funds, prosecutors said yesterday.
Police arrested 68 people in early morning raids in the southern toe of Italy, including a priest and the head of the local Misericordia association that manages the Sant’Anna Cara immigrant center in the town of Isola Capo Rizzuto.
The fenced-in center can house up to 1,200 migrants, and mobsters from the powerful ‘Ndrangheta mafia managed to infiltrate the operation at least eight years ago, taking charge of key services such as catering and laundry, prosecutors said.
“If 500 migrants had to have lunch, just 250 meals would arrive at the center. The other 250 would either have to eat in the evening, or else the next day,” prosecutor Nicola Gratteri said. “In the meantime the head of the Misericordia, the priest and their friends grew fat, bought luxury cars, flats and boats.”
The Florence-based national Misericordia association said in a statement it had full faith in the judiciary and was placing the southern migrant center under special administration.
Police sequestered goods and property worth 84 million euros (US$92.25 million) in their early morning sweep. Some 200,000 euros was found at the house of one man who had declared annual earnings of just 800 euros to the tax man, Gratteri said.
The head of parliament’s anti-mafia commission hailed the operation. “The Cara of Isola Capo Rizzuto had become a money printing operation for organized crime thanks to the complicity of those who ran the center,” Rosy Bindi said. “This operation shows the ability of the mafia to take advantage of the weaknesses and fragility of our times with its predatory and parasitic approach.”
Police said many of those arrested belonged to the Arena clan of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia — Italy’s largest organized mob which is based in the region of Calabria and is one of Europe’s biggest cocaine importers.
The police statement said the Arena clan was also suspected of muscling in on the running of a migrant center on the southern island of Lampedusa, which is on the front line of Italy’s ongoing migrant crisis.
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