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Writer's pictureLucas Manjon

HISTORY AND TOOLS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST THE MAFIA

Updated: Nov 28

Argentina, like most countries in the world, is highly exposed to the actions of mafia organizations and the social consequences derived from them. So far, the State has not provided efficient or even innovative responses. In Italy, together with organized civil society and a broad sector of politics and justice, they have been promoting for almost seventy years the creation of a series of logical, modern and interrelated tools to confront mafia organizations and recover some central aspects of the democratic value lost due to mafia actions: the trust that citizens place in the State. Argentina is increasingly listening and trying to design some of these tools to implement them in the country. Recognizing the similarities and differences throughout history can be the first vehicle for synergistic learning. Here is a brief review of that history and some of these tools.

A new strategy against the mafia.
A new strategy against the mafia.

The first Spanish translation of the Italian Anti-Mafia Code arose from a specific context: the launch of the Bien Repósito project and the need to promote the social reuse of seized and confiscated property from organized crime in Argentina. But in order to delve into this version of the Code, it is also interesting to know the context and needs that led to its emergence in its country of origin.


Before starting, I will dwell on some methodological considerations. First of all, in this essay the term criminal organization will have the same meaning as that of mafia or mafia-like organization. Although the term mafia association or mafia in Italy has a character not only conceptual but also legal, for the purposes of this article a specific distinction and characterization will not be necessary.


Secondly, it is important to note that given my academic background in History, this writing will be arranged chronologically, since I understand that the analysis of historical events, and in particular that of Argentina, provides the tools that allow for a better understanding of social realities.


The Mafia is a social phenomenon that, among its many facets, takes on the role of a planned and structured organisation to commit criminal acts in pursuit of economic gain. Mafia-type organisations in Italy have their origins in the second half of the 19th century, in a region as unique as it is diverse, which began immediately after the end of the influence of the Roman capital. All of them, the Camorra in Campania, the Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, were born within the framework of a dying feudal system, when the old production relations had not yet finished dying and the new ones were being born. About these organisations, perhaps the one about which we have the most information and knowledge is the so-called Cosa Nostra, the mafia that has its beginnings on the island of Sicily but which takes its name from its mafia counterparts in the United States, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.


Until the 1960s, mafia activity in Italy was concentrated around the control, extortion and smuggling of agricultural products. When World War II ended, the geographic and economic location of mafia activity changed along with the political and economic life of Italy in general, where: 1) the Christian Democratic Party (DC) took political power and held it until the early 1990s; 2) political and military leaders in the United States actively intervened in Italian domestic politics due to the level of influence of the Italian Communist Party; and, 3) the process of reconstruction of the Italian economy defined by the Keynesian development model, which expanded the powers and obligations of economic policy and produced the transfer of the center of gravity from the countryside to the city.


Major changes also took place elsewhere in the world, influencing and contributing to the growth of international criminal organisations, particularly Italian ones: 1) the demand for opiate drugs - heroin - increased in the United States; 2) French criminal organisations lost control of the market for this type of drug; and 3) Italian mafia organisations - especially Cosa Nostra - using their criminal associates in the United States took over the heroin market from the Middle East.


The growth and expansion of the drug market - not only in the United States - favored the exponential increase in Cosa Nostra's profits, and the economic benefits that quickly flowed to the island were the last incentive needed to unleash two major problems: internal disputes and the overabundance of accumulated physical money.


The first problem was solved in the same way that differences within criminal organisations are solved: with gunpowder and blood. The second was solved by deepening relations with financial institutions, the modern sectors of northern Italian industry and those of national politics in Rome. These special relations made it easier for the Sicilian mafia to reinvest money on the island and in a few areas of the peninsular economy. By making “legal investments” throughout Italy, Cosa Nostra managed to increase its profit levels, while strengthening its ties with corrupt sectors of the State which, in exchange for the money received, guaranteed impunity.


Due to the expansion and consolidation of the mafia system of government of this particular criminal organization, Italy began to draft a series of laws and provisions to deal with the phenomenon of organized crime from the democratic contract. The first of these was in 1962/1963 and consisted of the creation of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, which is still in force today.


The first and most detailed judicial/academic reports emerged from this parliamentary body. They attempted to demonstrate the real existence of the criminal phenomenon - several members of the commission itself denied the existence of the mafia as such - and, fundamentally, they served to characterize the mafia and thus be able to find the appropriate mechanisms to intervene in the mafia phenomenon.


One of the most important reports, which achieved real significance both inside and outside the Commission, was presented in 1976. This report, which was presented in a minority by the parliamentarians Cesare Terranova and Pio La Torre and supported by only six other deputies and senators, made direct reference to the relations of some of the most important political leaders of the DC in Sicily with Cosa Nostra. For the first time, it also outlined what would later become the central axis of the criminal policy of the Italian State to deal with organised crime: profits.


One of the first regulations regarding criminal organizations - without making particular reference to mafia-type organizations - was Law No. 1423/56 on "Preventive measures against persons dangerous to public safety and morals", passed in 1956 and repealed in 2011.


Almost ten years later, under Law 575/65, the Italian Parliament approved a series of provisions to try to deal with the possibility of applying preventive measures - precautionary measures - in relation to people suspected of committing mafia-type crimes. These first provisions, together with the reports of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission and the union and political work of Pio La Torre, led to the presentation of a bill that transformed the fight against organized crime. Thus, in 1980, the then deputy Pio La Torre - accompanied by the Minister of the Interior Virgilio Rognoni - sought to classify the crime of mafia association and the power to order the confiscation of the assets - the proceeds - that the criminal organization acquired through criminal activity.


The first article of the bill defined mafia association as a crime.

Art. 416 bis. “Anyone who forms part of a mafia-type association made up of three or more persons shall be punished with a prison sentence of three to six years. Those who promote, direct or organize the association shall be punished, for this alone, with imprisonment of four to nine years. The association is of a mafia type when those who form part of it make use of the intimidating force of the associative bond and the condition of submission and silence that derives from it to commit a crime, to directly or indirectly acquire the direction or in any case the control of economic activities, concessions, authorizations, contracts and public services or to obtain unfair benefits or advantages for themselves or for others. (...) If the economic activities of which the associates intend to assume or maintain control are financed in whole or in part with the price, product or profit of crimes, the penalties established in the previous paragraphs are increased by one third to one half. The confiscation of things that served or were intended to commit the crime and of things that are its price, product, profit or that constitute its use is always obligatory. (...) The provisions of this article also apply to the Camorra and other associations, whatever their local name, which, using the intimidating force of the associative link, pursue aims corresponding to those of mafia-type associations."

Article 31 of the same project incorporated confiscation as part of the punitive penalty:

“(...) The conviction is followed by the confiscation of the assets acquired for any reason, as well as the consideration for the assets sold for any reason. In cases where it is not possible to proceed with the confiscation of the assets acquired or the consideration for the assets sold, the judge will order the confiscation, for an equivalent value, of the sums of money, assets or other profits to which the subjects refer in article 30, first paragraph, to have the availability.”

The specification of crimes committed as a member of a mafia-type organization, together with the legal instrument of confiscating the assets -product, profit or equivalent- that the mafia organizations acquired, became the first and real concern of the mafia organizations vis-a-vis the State.


Because of his dogged efforts to bring judicial, political and social practices into line to combat organised crime, Pio La Torre became a target for Cosa Nostra. Two years after presenting the project on mafia organisations and launching an arduous campaign to oppose the installation of a NATO missile launching base on the island of Sicily, on 30 April 1982, in Palermo, his hometown, Pio La Torre was assassinated along with a fellow party member.


After La Torre's murder, the killing continued. In an attempt to provide an apparent response to a situation that had spiralled out of control, the national authorities sent Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa - a general of the Carabinieri - to the island as Prefect of Palermo in order to stop the bloodshed; only four months later, Dalla Chiesa was also killed along with his wife by hitmen sent by the top brass of Cosa Nostra. The shock of this new murder forced national politicians to give an immediate response: on September 13, 1982 - ten days later - the Italian Parliament approved Law No. 646/1982, the project presented two years earlier by Pio La Torre and Virgilio Rognoni.


Months later, in 1983, magistrate Rocco Chinnici decided to call together magistrates and prosecutors and create a special group dedicated exclusively to investigating and proving that the criminal activities of the Cosa Nostra were varied, organized and committed by a fickle but organic entity. The proto-team was initially made up of Chinnici himself, and the prosecutors and magistrates Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino and Giuseppe Di Lello. In June of that year, Chinnici was killed when a car bomb exploded outside his home and his place was taken by Antonino Caponnetto, a magistrate who had arrived from the city of Florence and who added Leonardo Guarnotta to the team.


The investigations of the pool reached their climax in 1987 when a court, based on the accusation and referral to trial founded by Falcone and Borsellino, sentenced more than 350 mafiosi in the Maxiprocesso to a total of 2,665 years in prison, not counting life sentences. The response of the mafia and the corrupt sectors of politics was not long in coming. The leader of the anti-mafia pool - Antonino Caponnetto - had to return to Florence convinced that Giovanni Falcone would be the one to take his place as leader of the team. To the surprise and displeasure of many, and after a maneuver that was apparently concocted by judicial and political sectors, the place ended up being occupied by a magistrate close to retirement, with no experience in investigations against the mafia and who quickly dismantled the successful system of the anti-mafia pool.


In the years to come, a significant sector of the Italian justice system continued to investigate Cosa Nostra, but since the conviction of the so-called Maxiprocesso, the evidence and testimonies provided by the pentiti - repentant mafia collaborators - led to a deepening of the investigations into the complicity of the business and political sectors with the mafia organisation. The tense atmosphere in the face of the confusion of new investigations unleashed a climate of mistrust, accusations, lies and more murders.


The leader of the fight against the mafia was Giovanni Falcone, and most of these attacks were directed against him. Not because of this, but because of the impossibility of being able to carry out the investigations under his charge, Falcone decided to accept the proposal to head the Criminal Affairs Directorate of the Ministry of Justice based in Rome. From there he proposed and achieved the creation of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate (DIA) and the National Anti-Mafia Directorate (DNA). In 1991, through Legislative Decrees No. 345 and No. 367, the respective directorates were created, which were established with the aim of deepening and coordinating judicial investigations. The DIA is currently an organization made up of members of security forces such as the Polizia di Stato, the Guardia di Finanza and the Carabinieri. Instead, the DNA - currently the DNNA (National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate) - is headed by the Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor, who is appointed by the Council of the Judiciary - Superior Council of the Judiciary - with the agreement of the Minister of Justice.


The confirmation of the sentences handed down in the Maxiprocesso by the Court of Cassation unleashed the fury of the top leaders of Cosa Nostra. According to the statements of the repentants, at the end of 1991, at a meeting in the small Sicilian town of Enna between the top leaders of Cosa Nostra, with what was apparently a corrupt sector of the intelligence services, it was agreed or authorized to kill a certain group of officials. The first of those killed was Salvo Lima, a high-ranking figure in Sicilian politics who acted as a link between the Prime Minister of Italy - Giulio Andreotti - and Cosa Nostra, and who broke the promise made to the mafia that the sentences of the Maxiprocesso would be annulled.


Then Cosa Nostra planned and executed the murder of the top leaders in the fight against organised crime. On 23 May 1992, using a sophisticated explosive device placed under a motorway by three mobsters, they murdered Giovanni Falcone, his wife and magistrate Francesca Morvillo and three of his bodyguards. Fifty-seven days later, during which it was always clear to him that he was also going to be killed and so he took advantage of the situation by denouncing the political and business complicity with Cosa Nostra, Paolo Borsellino and five of his bodyguards were also killed by an explosive device.


The murder of the top leaders and their bodyguards sparked a nationwide outcry, reverberating in various parts of the world - particularly in the United States, Spain and France - and forcing state authorities to unblock a series of measures proposed by Giovanni Falcone himself to deepen the fight against the mafia.


Between the murders of Falcone and Borsellino, the special and particular article 41bis regarding the prison regime was modified by Decree Law No. 306/92. This decree, which only became law after the murder of Borsellino, enabled the possibility of suspending the guarantees and institutions provided for in the prison regime in order to prevent the transmission of orders from prison to the outside. The toughening of the regime that is still in force today consists of the impossibility of accessing the institute of early release for those convicted of mafia crimes if they do not first cooperate with justice, in regimes of isolation and permanent control, and it establishes that they cannot have physical contact with family members when they receive their visits.


At the beginning of 1993, the top leader of Cosa Nostra - Toto Riina - was arrested after more than ten years on the run, but the mafia continued to escalate the spiral of violence, exporting its extortion mechanisms to the peninsula. On May 27, a car bomb in Florence killed five people, on July 28, 1993, two car bombs exploded in the city of Rome, injuring 22 people, and on January 23, 1994, security forces managed to deactivate an explosive device placed in the Olympic Stadium in Rome when a football match between Lazio and Udinese was about to take place.


Faced with a flood of investigations and arrests, some of which indicated a possible betrayal within the new leadership of Cosa Nostra, the mafia organization decided to change its strategy: it continued to carry out the criminal activities it always did but with an extremely low profile. Without attacks or murders that impacted the press or politics, the mafia continued to torment the lives of citizens. In this framework of apparent calm, social organizations continued to develop activities aimed not only at dismantling the mafia judicially, but also at destructuring it culturally and economically.


Fourteen years later, based on a popular initiative by the social organization Libera, Law No. 109/1996 was passed, which established that the assets confiscated from mafias - through the Rognoni - La Torre law - can be reused for social purposes by the State itself or by organized civil society. In this way and to date, more than fifteen thousand properties have been transformed into offices for the State, organizations and social cooperatives. Land that belonged to members of mafia organizations is used by agricultural cooperatives that carry out organic production and social-labor inclusion of the most vulnerable sectors. Large buildings have been transformed into public libraries, shelters for women victims of gender violence, accommodation for senior citizens, and sports and socio-educational centers for young people in marginalized neighborhoods.


What is special about social recycling experiences such as those taking place in Italy is that they are part of a virtuous circle of empowerment and joint work between society, victims and the State, regenerating trust in the latter, which was weakened by mafia-like actions. Through the law promoted by social associations, which was accompanied by a million signatures, business chambers, unions, professional associations and religious representatives of different faiths also became involved in the virtuous circle that today continues to transform spaces of illegality and pain into spaces of work and solidarity.


Another key step in the process of building and implementing tools to combat organized crime within the Italian process was Law No. 4/2010, which determined the creation of a National Agency for the Administration and Destination of Assets Seized and Confiscated from Organized Crime (ANBSC). Through it, the nearly sixty thousand properties, the five companies and the hundreds of thousands of movable assets that were taken from mafia organizations are preserved, managed, and their correct use is guaranteed. The main headquarters of the agency is currently located in Rome, precisely within a confiscated property.


After 46 years of work by broad sectors of the judiciary, politics and social organisations, Italy has embarked on the path of organising and unifying the number of anti-mafia laws and regulations that have been created over time. Thus, in 2011, under Legislative Decree No. 159/2011, the Italian Anti-Mafia Code was regulated and published.


The first fifteen articles of the Code specify personal preventive measures to avoid the possible commission of crimes by persons suspected of belonging to mafia organizations. Articles 16 to 34 ter indicate the measures to determine the seizure and confiscation of assets that could be the product or benefit of mafia activity. Articles 34 ter to 54 define the mechanism by which seized or confiscated assets are kept and used. The following articles up to 114 define the handling of anti-mafia documents generated in investigation processes and the mechanisms by which municipal administrations infiltrated by the mafia are dissolved and managed. Finally, certain rules are mentioned that, in general terms, regulate the operation of the DNAA, the DIA and the ANBSC.


The need to translate the Italian Anti-Mafia Code arose in the context of the implementation in Argentina of the Bien Restitudo project, led by Libera and the Associations of Names and Numbers against the mafias. The project seeks to transform criminal assets into common assets so that they can be reused socially and economically by the State and popular organizations. The reuse of assets is a practice that allows the State to fulfill its duty to repair the damage suffered by the direct victims of criminal activities, but also by the indirect victims, which is civil society in general, with particular emphasis on its most vulnerable sectors.


The first translation of the Italian Anti-Mafia Code has been a reference element for deepening knowledge about the anti-mafia legislation and practice of the State and organized civil society in Italy. The opportunity to have the Spanish version of this code opened the doors for all Latin American countries to acquire one of the central elements of a novel and innovative policy around a social phenomenon, which today and in the coming years will be one of the greatest challenges of global society along with climate change.


The social reuse of assets of organised crime is an effective tool in Italy that allows, on the one hand, reparation to direct and indirect victims of mafia violence and, on the other, to the State to regain the trust that citizens place in it and that is key to the preservation of the democratic contract, while at the same time, it enables the destructuring of the economic base of mafia organisations, which is their only source of survival.


In Argentina, and after three years of work, under legislative file number 1314-D-2024, more than thirty deputies from nine different political parties presented a bill prepared by more than forty social, judicial and religious organizations in which it is proposed to create an Agency to administer the assets that the federal justice system safeguards and confiscates from organized crime and that they be socially reused both by the State and by social organizations, thus replicating the Italian model.


Notes


  • Agenzia Nazionale per l'amministrazione e la destinazione dei Beni Sequestrati e Confiscati alla criminalità organizzata. https://openregio.anbsc.it/



  • Carles, R.: Francisco por una justicia realmente humana, Ediar, Argentina, 2018.


  • Casanello, S & Manjon, L.: Desde el bien incautado hasta el bien común. Por una cultura de paz, legalidad y justicia social a través de la Red Alas, Libera: Italia, 2022.




  • Dickie, J.: Cosa Nostra. Historia de la mafia siciliana, Penguin Random House: España, 2004.


  • Dickie, J.: Historia de la mafia. Cosa Nostra, ´Ndrangheta, Camorra, de 1860 al presente, Debate: España, 2015.




  • Dominguez, I.: Crónicas de la mafia, Libros K.O., España, 2019.


  • Duggan, C.: Historia de Italia, Akal, España: 2017.




  • Falcone, G.: Cose di Cosa Nostra. Fabbri: Italia, 1994.


  • Forgione, F.: Mafia export. Como la ´Ndrangheta, la Cosa Nostra y la Camorra han colonizado el mundo, Anagrama: España, 2010.



  • Gambetta, D.: La mafia siciliana. El negocio de la protección privada, FCE: México, 2007.


  • Gratteri, N & Nicaso, A.: Hermanas de sangre. Historias de la ´Ndrangheta, la mafia más poderosa, Debate; España, 2009.



  • Ley 109 de 1996. Por la cual se establecen disposiciones sobre el manejo y destino de los bienes incautados o decomisados. Enmiendas a la ley del 31 de mayo de 1965, n. 575, y en el artículo 3 de la ley de 23 de julio de 1991, n. 223. Derogación del artículo 4 del decreto-ley de 14 de junio de 1989, n. 230, convertido, con modificaciones, por la ley 4 de agosto de 1989, n. 282. 7 de marzo de 1996. GU Nº 58. https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1996-03-07;109





  • Lupo, S.: Historia de la mafia. Desde sus orígenes hasta nuestros días, FCE: México, 2009.


  • Manjon, L.: Código Antimafia Italiano, BdeF: Argentina, 2022.


  • Manjon, L.: Desde el bien incautado hasta el bien común, Libera: Italia, 2019.


  • Perry, A.: Las buenas madres. La historia de las mujeres que se enfrentaron a la mafia más poderosa, Ariel: España, 2019.




  • Queralt, J.: Crónicas Mafiosas. Sicilia 1985-2005, Veinte años de mafia y antimafia, Cahoba: España, 2005.

  • Turone, G.: Italia oculta. Terror contra la democracia, Editorial Trotta: España, 2019.


  • Varese, F.: Mafia life. Amor, muerte y dinero en el corazón del crimen organizado, Malpaso: España. 2017.


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