The Mafia today

The Mafia today

Pietro Grasso is one of Italy’s most powerful men, at least as far as his authorization goes, and in practice almost no one can limit it: he is the National anti-mafia prosecutor. Privately and professionally he is fighting the mafia that killed two of his friends and role-models. Why does he find Serbia interesting?

B92: Mr Grasso, welcome to the program. Can you tell us the reason for your visit to Serbia?

Grasso: First of all, the main reason for my visit here is the fact this is the most important city in the Balkans and we allocate great importance to it. This is my second visit abroad since I hold the office of the National anti-mafia prosecutor. My first trip was to Bogotá, Columbia, and now here I am in Belgrade. I believe that this very fact can lead you to conclude how important it is for us to work to combat organized crime here in the Balkans. 

B92: We are aware that there is organized crime in Serbia, but isn’t the comparison with Colombia a bit strong? Is Serbia that high up the international criminal ladder?

Grasso: The question is not so much Serbia and its criminal specifics as the fact that this is an area of transit. This is the place where many criminal and mafia activities take place, originating in central Asia and the region, such as Romania and Bulgaria. This is an area where international criminal enterprises and activities take place. It is not uncommon for Italian mafia groups to team up with the local criminal elements. Crimes are then committed in Italy and other regions, but here as well.

Italy is famous for its history and arts, but unfortunately also for the organized crime. Mafia or the Cosa Nostra is the largest criminal organization in the south of Italy with to all intents and purposes a global influence, thousands of members and represents a role- model for other criminal organizations in Italy. After the murders of civil servants, Italy started a serious institutional struggle against crime, and the first thing on the agenda was severing the ties mafia had with the Italian government.

B92: What does the mafia do today? What are the characteristics of its present-day activities?

Grasso: As far as the activities that are currently of interest to the mafia, drug trafficking tops the list, followed by arms and explosives smuggling. Lately, they have started to involve themselves in human trafficking, and they show interest in illegal immigration as well.

B92 has investigated a case of human trafficking – perpetrators were convicted after a trial that took only six days. Women originally from the former Soviet Union states were taken to Italy via Serbia. A Serb residing in Italy, Mladen Dalmacija, was the criminal group’s ringleader. This is just one example of the cooperation between the Italian and the domestic mafia.

B92: Mister Grasso, you were made the National anti-mafia prosecutor at the end of last year, when you replaced Mr Vigna. Have you had a chance to engage yourself in combating the organized crime branch that deals with human trafficking? That is the type of crime that goes against the victim’s dignity the most.

Grasso: We have recently had an operation aimed at suppressing this occurrence, with the main subjects of the investigation being the women forced into prostitution, in the Adriatic region of Puglia. Organized crime was involved by allowing a part of the territory it traditionally controlled to be used for prostitution, getting arms and drugs at discount prices in return. Within the framework of our activity aimed at protecting the women made victims of human trafficking and prostitution, we work to protect them from extortion, rescue them from slavery and salvage their dignity.

B92: It is not uncommon for both the victims and the criminals involved in human trafficking to originate in Serbia. Have you come across people from these parts in you investigation? 

Grasso: The persons involved were from Romania and Northern Africa. We have a law in Italy dealing with human trafficking and this law gives us advantage over other legal systems in the world. The law stipulates that the victims can come forward directly to the courts and the police. The moment they come to us for help, based on their willingness to cooperate, they receive all forms of protection. We offer them a possibility of immediate integration into society with no strings attached. The message for all the people suffering in slavery-like circumstances in  Italy is clear: go to the courts, to the police and you will be helped, you will be freed.

Italian anti-mafia prosecution has been investigating the smuggling of cigarettes to Montenegro for more than a decade. The prosecution in Naples decided in July 2003 to accuse the Montenegrin prime minister Milo Đukanović of involvement. The judge in charge of the case did not consider these accusations, due to the Montenegrin leader’s immunity – at least this was the case according to the media. During 2003 and 2004 the Italian police arrested 25 mafia Bosses in an operation code-named ’Montenegro’. It was then that the top of the mafia organizaton Camora was revealed.

B92: Can you give us any new information related to the cigarette trafficking, at least that which can be made public? Some top Montenegrin officials were mentioned in the context. So, is there any new information? 

Grasso: Considering that the investigation is ongoing I cannot tell you much. What is known is that there is a process. We have had to take the investigation all the way to Switzerland in order to find out where the treasure is hidden, but also to find out about the financial aspects related to that country. As far as the future of the cigarette smuggling is concerned, I can tell you that Italy is becoming less and less attractive as a destination, all the more since the smuggled cigarettes market is not as lucrative as it used to be. These activities are now focusing on the United Kingdom, where the price of cigarettes is much higher.

The Italian mafia is an organization resembling a family. It is headed by Capo di tutti capi, in other words, the Boss of all Bosses, who is in charge of handling the business and is chosen only after the death – or imprisonment - of the previous Boss.

Grasso: One of mafia’s main characteristics is the ability to link the modern with the traditional. Its activities still take place within the traditional structure, now fitted into the framework of the financial channels in the modern society. At first, the mafia was linked to the country, to agriculture, clearly territorially defined. As you know, it time it moved toward the cities, occupied itself exclusively with trade, that is, contraband. Then it turned to narcotics, and today it is in the business world.

During the 1980’s, in under ten years, Italy adopted more than a hundred new laws to help it combat the mafia. One of the most significant laws is the one enabling confiscation of property that is under suspicion of having been made through criminal activities. The Serbian Special prosecution searched for a solution based on this, since Italy proved that the most serious blow dealt to the mafia was the confiscation of property. It was then that the prosecutors became truly powerful; but at the same time also a target for the mafia.

B92: That certainly means that the Italian mafia has in a way regrouped. Can you explain to us the term ‘the business mafia’, that it, what is it that the mafia does nowadays?

Grasso: It is the mafia involved in the business that is virtually legal. It has entered the large companies’ structures. It engages in seemingly legal activities and has an incredible ability of infiltrating businesses, often abroad. That is why this kind of mafia is dangerous for young democracies, because it manages to seep into the governing bodies and thus achieve its interests. I always tell the story of the two mafia members whose conversations we tapped, around the time of the fall of the Berlin wall. ‘Buy all you can in East Berlin, everything, pizza joints, bars, clubs, hotels, everything you can.’ In other words, the Berlin wall had just crumbled, and they already won a new market. What we need to understand is that today the mafia is as dangerous as before, only not so conspicuous and illegal. The stereotype, Sicilians in caps, with big knives and rifles, that’s gone. They are as ruthless as before, only operating within the business environment.

The Italian Cosa Nostra has become incredibly ruthless in the 20^th century. Their narcotics trade seemed unstoppable until Judge Giovanni Falcone and prosecutor Paolo Borsellino took stage. A chase after drugs and dirty money was on. It was then that the game was joined by the then Lugano prosecutor, today the Hague Tribunal prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte. Del Ponte revealed Cosa Notra accounts and became a part of Falcone’s team combating the international mafia. She lived in Palermo, in Falcone’s house, at the time when 50 kilograms of explosives were found in its basement. Judge Falcone organized a huge trial against the mafia Bosses in Palermo in 1985, when the Cosa Nostra proclaimed him its enemy number one.

Although Falcone moved to Rome in 1991, he was killed on May 23, 1992. He was succeeded by his former prosecutor, Paolo Borsellino, also killed in a bomb attack. Pietro Grasso took over the processes.

B92: Judges Falcone and Borsellino have truly become international symbols of anti-mafia struggle. You have had an opportunity to work on some of the cases started by them. So, what are your experiences in combating the Italian mafia?

Grasso: My experience includes work on the large process started by my role models judges Falcone and Borsellino. That process included as many as 476 indictments and took 2 years. We worked 6 days a week in the morning and evening, so you may say two years are a long time, considering the tempo. Apart from a large number of the indicted, we also had a large number of witnesses.

The process ended with sentencing on December 16, 1987, after more than 22 months of hearings and 35 days of deliberation. Prosecutor Grasso spent eight months writing a monumental verdict on seven thousand pages gathered in 37 volumes.

B92: There is a large trial in process in Serbia at this moment, probably the biggest in Serbia’s history, that of the accused for the prime minister Đinđić’s assassination. There are 13 men indicted. What is your reaction to the fact this trial has already taken two and a half years and counting? How dangerous is a situation like that in the fight against organized crime?

Grasso: What I have to warn about based on my experience is that these trials need to be speeded up. There is always the risk of the accused men being set free, depending on the period of time that the law allows for the detention. In Italy, however fast our processes may appear, the parliament has made a new law in order to counter the risk I talked about. In this way, the trials have been expedited in order to avoid letting the accused go. If they were set free, that would be a blow for justice, and on the other hand, would not produce any sort of a result. That would render these trials nonsensical even if a verdict were to be reached in the end.

The Italian mafia Boss Bernardo Provenzano was recently arrested after spending 43 years I hiding. This is the last picture the authorities had before his arrest, so they made photo-robots for years, anticipating his aging, and yet no one could know for certain. Provenzano joined the Cosa Nostra at 20 and was an obedient mafia soldier. He was nicknamed ‘the Tractor’, mostly likely due to his cruelty, and is charged with 130 murders, among them those of Falcone and Borsellino. He became Capo di tutti capi in 1993, after Toto Rina was arrested. He was not considered overly intelligent, he was known as a Mafioso who was shooting like an angel, with the brains of a chicken. However, he managed to keep evading a helpless police for decades.

B92: Mr Grasso, how is it possible that a Mafioso, a Mafia Boss, the Boss of the Cosa Nostra, spends such a long time evading the law? He was in hiding for 40 years.

Grasso: Of course, it is true that Provenzano spent 40 years in hiding, and it is also true that we actively searched for him only during the past ten years, since he became the head of the Cosa Nostra after the arrest of the previous Boss. I must say that he was very hard to trace and arrest, and prior to that, naturally, we had to localize him. He did not use usual techniques of communication; he never used a mobile phone. Instead, his communication was very traditional. In fact, mostly done by a type-writer, but often he was handwriting messages on pieces of paper. He would then give those messages to the trusted Mafiosi, and then they passed them from man to man. It is hard to trace these messages back to a closed circle of people who know each other well and for a long time, and it is also hard to localize the key players. We understood a new technique had to be devised. In my opinion, the technique we used then was brilliant. The investigation lead us to a cottage and we believed that Provenzano may in fact be there. We started the surveillance of everything that went out of the house, including garbage bags. And it was in those that we found the said pieces of paper Provenzano used to handwrite his messages. In this way, after a long investigation and a long search, and also after digging in such material for a long time, we guessed where he might be. Still, until the very last moment we could not be certain we would really find him in this small house in central Sicily.

B92: Provenzano was known as ‘The Phantom of Corleone’, that is, it was believed that he was very skilled in all kinds of disguise, than this was in fact the way he eluded the police, while his attorney claimed he was dead. Do you believe that it was this long hiding that made Provenzano into a legend, considering he never left Sicily, and the state just could not arrest him?

Grasso: His arrest is very significant, since he became a symbol of the state’s inability, its lack of competence when it came to bringing to justice a person accused of giving orders, if not personally taking part in the killings of very important people in Italian jurisdiction, judges Falcone and Borsellino, who had dedicated their entire lives to fighting the mafia.

B92: Provenzano was sentenced to life in prison in absentia. As far as I’m aware, there are six additional processes against him, charging him with regular mafia activities: murder, extortion, money laundering. I am very interested in the accuracy of the speculation that the Cosa Nostra chose its new leader prior to Provenzano’s arrest, thus neutralizing it?

Grasso: His arrest does not conclude the fight against the mafia, if anything it is only starting. We found nearly 200 messages on pieces of paper in the place where he spent years hiding, so that now we need to dedicate our efforts to finding those close to Provenzano. I believe many years will pass before we can discover all the persons involved in the Cosa Nostra activities, or the way in which they continue with those activities. Still, I do hope we have dealt the mafia a major blow with his arrest, and that we will manage to stand in their way and arrest all the important members before the Boss is named. In any case, if you have some fugitives you need to arrest around here, we can provide advice.

The Cosa Nostra stories became widely popular after ‘The Godfather’ movies. Apparently it was no accident the writer chose Corleone, a small Sicilian town, as the mafia central. The last three Bosses, Lido, arrested in 1974, Rino, arrested in 1993, and now Provenzano, come from that tiny town.  Still, the Italian anti-mafia prosecutor believes it is necessary to destroy an image these movies have created, namely that the mafia members are handsome, clever and almost without a fail more successful than the state, because that simply is not true.

B92: And you do believe it is possible to destroy that myth now, after so many years, especially concerning the appearance and etiquette of Italian mobsters?

Grasso: There is this myth about the Italian Mafioso. We imagine him in a white suit, refined. That is a myth they themselves are trying to propagate, because it brings with it respect. Still, we need to be careful, because those people are always ready to commit the most brutal murders. Provenzano and others are trying to project an image of being God’s emissaries on earth, ready for anything, and what is the most dangerous today is that you can no longer recognize them instantly.

B92: Mr Grasso, thank you for your time.