Roman public opinion is in a state of shock following the arrest on Tuesday of 37 people, — most of them involved in the administration of the “Eternal City” — who are accused of mafia type crime, including bribery, usuary, extortion and money laundering.
Initiated in 2010, operation "Middle Earth", led by Rome's senior Public Prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone, gives the definitive lie to one of the worst kept secrets in modern Italy. Namely, that the "municipal" influence of organised crime is restricted to the southern mafia-infested regions of Campania, Calabria, Puglia and Sicily.
We have known for years that Italian organised crime has moved north to the country's business capital, Milan, attracted by the possibility of finding investment outlets for much of its ill-gotten gains. What was not quite so clear was the extent to which organised crime had created a "system" in Rome, centred around the former right wing terrorist Massimo Carminati and capable of bribing and corrupting city fathers on all sides of the political divide. In one wire tapped conversation released yesterday, Carminati tells his right hand man, Riccardo Bruggia:
“It is all about the Middle Earth theory, mate. You see, up above us are the living and below us are the dead and then there is us, in the middle...and that is a middle world where everybody and everything can meet...”
56-year-old Carminati is no stranger to Italian police since his right wing terrorist connections led investigators to charge him with the murder of investigative journalist/secret service agent Mino Pecorelli in March 1979. Investigators also charged him with interfering in the investigation into the 1980 Bologna Train Station bombing in which 85 people were killed. On both occasions he was acquitted.
Police, however, had always believed Carminati to be a relatively unique figure in the world of crime since he managed to move from right wing terrorism to playing a key role in the Banda della Magliana, a notorious Roman gang responsible for drug trafficking, money laundering and various murders in the 70s and early 80s. For his part in Magliana crimes, he was given a ten year prison sentence in 1998.
Since his release from prison, Carminati, one of those arrested on Tuesday, had re-established contacts with Roman politicians, civil servants, builders and businessmen with a view to dividing up the appetising cake generated by the Italian capital.
In some of the wire taps, Carminati’s associates boast of paying a whole series of public officials and politicians anything from €1,000 to €15,000 per month to ensure that transport contracts, garbage removal contracts and planning permissions all went their way.
Perhaps most cynical of all is the comment made by another of Carminati’s closest associates, Salvatore Buzzi, a convicted killer, who is heard to say:
“Have you any idea of how much we can make on these migrants?...You make less money trafficking drugs...Last year, we made all our money on those gypsies, on the housing emergency and on the migrants...”
This was a reference to the fact that the clan controlled by Carminati had opted to invest in setting up some of the many migrant camps around Rome, in the expectation of huge profits. The “sting” here was, obviously, that only some of the public funds went to providing services for the migrants, whilst much of it went into the pockets of organised crime.
Today Laura Boldrini, the Speaker of the Lower Chamber and a former spokesperson for the United Nations’s High Commission for Refugees, condemned this criminal behaviour, saying:
“We’re all horrified. The investigators need to go all the way with this and clarify the situation because the idea that you can make money on the backs of the weakest and most vulnerable is just disgusting.”
This evening the M5S protest movement called for Rome City Council to be formally closed and put into the hands of an administrator. Whilst the current centre-left Mayor Ignazio Marino is untouched by operation "Middle Earth", his immediate predecessor, centre-right figure Gianni Alemanno, is currently under investigation. This prompted Rome Democratic Party (PD) figure, Roberto Morassut, to comment this evening:
“Even if we all know that the mafia is well established in Rome, I don’t think you can say that all the Roman administrations were equally responsible. The point is that, under the Alemanno giunta, the relationship between (organised) crime and politics became very close, organic, almost addictive...”