28 July 2016
A Bad Time For Organised Crime
Believe it or not, the forces of law and order are winning some battles.
by Neil Tidmarsh
Good news? Yes, please. Right, ok, let’s see… hmmm… not easy, but here goes…
Law and order and public safety have indeed taken a battering in the last week or two. The deluded and the deranged have shed innocent blood in random and unpredictable attacks of shocking violence in Nice, Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Munich, Reutlingen, Ansbach and Sagamihara. And no doubt the danger is still with us. Next week, Shaw Sheet may well be reporting on fresh atrocities of this kind.
At the same time, however, there have been a number of victories for law and order which may actually have made our streets safer. These victories have attracted little notice and less comment, but the fact remains – it has been a terrible few weeks for organised crime.
First there was the arrest of mafia boss Ernesto Fazzalari in a remote Calabrian village. Mr Fazzalari, the 46 year old head of the ‘Ndrangheta, was the second most wanted man in Italy, after the Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro. He had been on the run for twenty years, and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for numerous crimes including belonging to the mafia, murder, drug dealing and the illegal possession of weapons.
The ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria (toe of Italy) are as rich, ruthless and powerful as the Cosa Nostra of Sicily and the Camorra of Naples, if not more so; though secretive, it is thought that they control the importation and trade of Latin American cocaine in Europe. Fazzalari went underground in 1996, after clan warfare broke out within the organisation. The Fazzalari clan won the internal feud; it’s said that they cut off the head of the boss of the rival Grimaldi clan and played football with it and used it as target practice for their firearms.
His arrest has been welcomed as a breakthrough in the fight against organised crime. The investigation – involving former gangsters turning states evidence, and businessmen brave enough to give evidence – ran for some years, but managed to remain secret, and the police operation which captured him took him completely by surprise. Carabinieri commandos raided his cottage and found him asleep with his 41 year old girlfriend, who was also arrested. Not a shot was fired, even though there were fire-arms in the cottage. The cottage was in a remote hamlet in the middle of the wild Aspromonte mountains; but it was near his hometown of Taurianova, the centre of the ‘Ndrangheta operations, which might explain why he was without bodyguards.
“This shows that you cannot run from justice – it is the kind of victory that encourages and supports us in the difficult but winnable fight against organised crime,” said interior minister Angelo Alfano.
Then there was the death of Bernardo Provenzano, the head of the Corleone crime family. He died two weeks ago in a hospital in Milan, aged 83. As a young man he earned the nickname “The Tractor” for his ruthlessness in cutting down the opposition. As an older man he earned the nickname “The Accountant” for his quiet efficiency in running the organisation’s business. He initially ran the Cosa Nostra with his friend Salvatore Riina, though their approaches to the forces of law and order differed; he preferred bribery and co-operation to violent confrontation. He was in sole control of the Sicilian mafia after Riina’s arrest in 1993 (did Provenzano have something to do with that?).
In 1992 he was convicted of the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors and of organising bomb attacks, but he wasn’t arrested until 2006; the police had been after him for 43 years. Coincidentally, he too was captured in a farmhouse not far from his birthplace. He suffered serious head injuries four years ago, apparently from a fall in his prison cell, but some believe that it was caused by a beating related to the Cosa Nostra’s strict code of silence. He died of a lung infection. The Senate president Pietro Grasso, himself a former anti-mafia prosecutor, said “He carried with him many mysteries…”
Then, last week, there was the arrest of Zakhary Kalashov, also known as Shakro the Young, probably Russia’s most notorious gangster. He is believed to be one of the ‘thieves-in-law’, old-school mobsters with a strict code of behaviour who are considered an elite among Russian criminals. He was arrested at his luxury home in the up-market district of Rublevka in Moscow; two people were killed and eight injured in a gunfight with the forces of law and order. He was charged in court with “extortion of a very large sum”, thought to refer to an eight million rouble debt and the Elements restaurant and its owner Zhanna Kim. He was remanded in custody until the middle of next month, although this week there were claims that he almost escaped after the court hearing; the Federal Security Services have arrested three high-ranking officials at the Investigative Committee for allegedly conspiring with him to that end.
There have been other victories against organised crime recently. Police in Italy, Colombia and the US have arrested 33 gang members, seized 11 tonnes of cocaine worth €3 billion and shut down seven cocaine refineries, to destroy an ‘Ndrangheta-related ring “running one of the most important cocaine routes into Europe” according to an Italian official. This week, the European Court of Justice imposed important measures to take licences for Italian beach establishments out of the hands of the mafia. Also this week, the two nephews of the wife of President Maduro of Venzuela who are in jail in New York awaiting trial accused of conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the US, having been arrested in Haiti last November, have admitted their guilt, according to the evidence of an undercover agent.
Good news? Yes, indeed. Unless, of course, you’re a member of an organised crime outfit yourself. But you’re a Shaw Sheet reader, so of course you aren’t.
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