Anti-mafia products make their mark in Sicily

You may have heard of the “fair trade” coffee and “conflict-free” diamond seals of corporate responsibility. In Italy they have another – “anti-mafia.”
It was not a typical supermarket opening. On a sunny evening, hundreds of Sicilians gathered outside the new Coop store, one of Italy’s largest supermarket chains, in the seaside town of Mondello.
“This [...]

Antonio Presti, anti-Mafia patron of the arts

For 30 years this Sicilian entrepreneur has been lavishing the bulk of his fortune on artistic projects. Defying convention, corruption and the Cosa Nostra, he seeks to “help people respect their patch” and “rediscover their identity” through art.
“I offer culture and beauty without asking anything in return,” he says. “It’s a gift I have, it’s [...]

Mobster’s Sicily villa handed to the media

The keys of the Sicilian villa where the notorious Mafia godfather Toto “the Beast” Riina spent his final months as a fugitive have been handed over to the local branch of the Italian journalists’ guild, several of whose members died under his bloody rein.
The gift is the latest from the national agency that confiscates mob [...]

Rome gets “Super Mafia”

ITALY’S four main Mafia organisations are believed to have put aside their deadly differences to form a new and dangerous ”fifth mafia” in Rome.
The impoverished south has been the traditional power base for the four big crime syndicates – Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the Camorra from Campania, the ‘Ndragheta of Calabria and the Sacra Corona Unita [...]

Cosa Nostra leader Gianni Nicchi captured in Sicily

The Italian interior minister said police in the Sicilian city were holding Nicchi after a raid on an apartment, where he had been hiding.
Roberto Maroni described the 28-year-old convicted Mafioso as a “young, dangerous, ambitious, pitiless killer”.
Police found Nicchi, 28, hiding Saturday in an apartment in Palermo. Local news reports said he [...]

Reports: Italian police arrest 94 Mafia suspects

News reports say three separate anti-Mafia sweeps across southern Italy have netted some 100 detentions and €240 million ($360 million) in seized assets.
The ANSA and Apcom news agencies say the most significant police raids occurred in Bari, where an entire mob clan was dismantled, with arrest warrants issued against 83 people and [...]

The holiday that helps battle the Sicilian mafia

Francesco Galante throws open the shutters, revealing a view of fields of bright green and deep brown in the Sicilian hills.
Inside the building, built of local stone, sits a new wood-burning oven, tables and chairs, their cushions still wrapped in protective plastic.
But Mr Galante’s new restaurant is no ordinary venture – it sits [...]

Tricky Sicilian Mafia Boss Arrested

A convicted Mafia boss who got out of jail by faking paralysis and anorexia has been arrested at a restaurant after more than two months on the run, police in Sicily said Tuesday.
Officers arrested Carmelo Di Stefano on Monday as he dined at a seaside village near the Sicilian city of Catania, [...]

Mafia murders four in Sicily

Suspected Mafia hitmen gunned down four people in Sicily, shooting dead the nephew of a Mafia informer hours after they had murdered three people in the eastern port of Catania, police said. Domenico Buscetta, the nephew of supergrass Tommaso Buscetta, was shot with a single bullet to the head in a [...]

Mafia loan sharks making a killing

ROME – When the bills started piling up and the banks wouldn’t lend, the white-haired art dealer in the elegant tweed jacket said he drove to the outskirts of Rome and knocked on the rusty steel door of a shipping container.
A beefy man named Mauro answered. He wore blue overalls with two [...]

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