Police arrest ‘average of 8 gangsters a day’
by Caroline Prosser (staff) | Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Direzione Nazionale Anti-Mafia (Marke-Clinger/Flickr)
In a new report on organised crime in Italy, Interior Minister Roberto Marconi announced an increase in Mafia arrests and confiscations of assets.
Marconi said that since 2007 €5.37 billion had been confiscated by police: a threefold increase. He also cited an average 8 gangsters a day arrested by police since 2008 when PM Silvio Berlusconi came into power. Commending his government on “an extraordinarily successful campaign”, the minister said that over €700 million of that money will be used to continue fighting the mafia.
This weekend, police in Naples arrested Camorra strongmen Pasquale and Salvatore Russo, both considered among the top 30 dangerous mobsters in Italy.
A recent report for Italy’s parliamentary anti-mafia commission claimed that 13 million Italians were living in areas in which the mob exerts influence over everyday life.
Giuseppe Pisanu, the commission’s head, said the Italian mafia was now “silently prospering, moving on from spectacular crimes and massacres to business and politics, with a prudent dose of intimidation and violence in a bid to take over the fundamental role of the state”.
