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TOPIC: mafia

Geopolitics

Anarchist Revival? Italy Risks Turning Alfredo Cospito Into A Martyr For A Lost Cause

Until a few weeks ago, Alfredo Cospito was a faceless holdout from a largely forgotten movement serving a life sentence for two separate attacks in the name of anarchism. But now his hunger strike has become a rallying cry for anarchists across Europe following a series of attacks protesting his prison conditions.

An anonymous telephone call breaks the morning quiet of a newspaper office, warning that a “major bombing” will soon happen in response to the treatment of a jailed anarchist.

As much as it sounds like 1970s Italy, when bombs went off in train stations and piazzas, and politicians and business executives were kidnapped in broad daylight, the telephone call arrived three days ago at the Bologna headquarters of the Italian newspaper Il Resto del Carlino.

It’s the latest twist around the case of Alfredo Cospito, a member of the Informal Anarchist Federation, whose ongoing hunger strike has dominated Italian public debate for the past several weeks, and become a rallying cry for an anarchist movement across Europe that many thought had faded away.

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"Here, He Wasn't Hiding" — How Mob Boss Messina Denaro Defied His Fugitive Status

Italy's most-wanted fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro lived in the open in a small town in Sicily, near his birthplace, thanks to widespread silence and complicity from his neighbors. It was essential to evading police for more than 30 years.

CAMPOBELLO DI MAZARA — Matteo Messina Denaro certainly wasn't hiding down at the bottom of some well.

Arrested in January at a clinic in Palermo, Italy’s most-wanted mob boss had been living freely and openly in this small Sicilian town, surrounded by neighbors who somehow never saw him.

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Weird Stuff, Guns & Money: Inside The Hideouts Of Mob Bosses And Fugitive Warlords

After the capture this week of Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, police revealed some notable contents of two of his hideouts after 30 years on the run. There's a long history of discovering the secret lairs and bunkers of the world's Most Wanted bad guys.

Expensive watches, perfumes, designer clothes and sex pills. A day after top Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro was captured after 30 years on the run, police revealed some of the possessions found in the Palermo apartment where he’d been hiding out under a false name.

By Wednesday, Italian daily La Stampa was reporting, police had found a second hideout near Messina Denaro's hometown in the Sicilian province of Trapani, with a secret vault hidden behind a closet, where jewelry, gold and other valuables were found.

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The Last Boss? Why Matteo Messina Denaro May Mark The End Of Sicily's Old School Mafia

Arrested Monday in Palermo, Messina Denaro was the son of a mobster and successor of Sicily's notorious boss of bosses. He had been on the run for 30 years, trying to transform Cosa Nostra into a modern criminal enterprise — with only partial success.

-Analysis-

PALERMO — It was 30 years ago, almost exactly to the day, January 15, 1993, when Totò Riina, then the undisputed head of the Corleone clan, was captured in Palermo. On Monday, it was the turn of Matteo Messina Denaro, now 60 years old, who has occupied the same place as "boss of bosses" of the Sicilian Mafia, who was tracked down and arrested in the same city.

Tracing back in time, Messina Denaro began his criminal ascent in 1989, around the first time on record that he was reported for mob association for his participation in the feud between the Accardo and Ingoglia clans.

At the time, Messina Denaro's father, 'don Ciccio', was the Mafia boss in the western Sicilian city of Trapani — and at only 20 years of age, the ambitious young criminal became Totò Riina's protégé. He would go on to help transform Cosa Nostra, tearing it away from the feudal tradition and catapulting it into the world of would-be legitimate business affairs.

For 30 years he managed to evade capture. He had chosen the path of ‘essential communication’: a few short pizzini - small slips of paper used by the Sicilian Mafia for high-level communications - without compromising information by telephone or digital means.

“Never write the name of the person you are addressing," Messina Denaro told his underlings. "Don’t talk in cars because there could be bugs, always discuss in the open and away from telephones. Also, take off your watches.”

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Green
Carl-Johan Karlsson

How The Mafia Is Moving Into Renewables And Other "Clean" Sectors

Mobster shootouts may be a thing of the past, but organized crime is still Italy’s biggest business. And the Mafia has changed its business model, expanding into cybercrime, cryptocurrency and even renewable energy.

As mobster shootouts and drug cartels have gravitated from the top of the evening news to bingeable series on streaming services, it could seem that traditional organized crime networks are in terminal decline. Even on the Italian island of Sicily, where Cosa Nostra essentially invented the modern mob, the attention garnered by high-profile murders in the early 1990s, and the subsequent arrest of some 4,000 mafiosi since, have given way to a lower-profile, less violent Mafia era.

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Society
Carl Karlsson

Nordic Mob? Why Organized Crime Is Exploding In Sweden

While remaining a remarkably safe country, Sweden is facing a recent surge of gang crimes that worries authorities, including a bombing in Gothenburg on Sep. 28th that injured more than 20. The fact that these family-based networks often have roots in North Africa and the Middle East is fueling criticism about the country's immigration policies.


Is this Sweden … or Sicily?

An explosion in a multi-family complex in the western Swedish city of Gothenburg on Tuesday has sparked a national debate over harsher punishment for organized crime.

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Japan
Yann Rousseau

Yakuza Blues: Japan's Notorious Gangsters Hit Hard By COVID

The infamous (yet legal) Japanese criminal syndicate was already suffering under new laws when the pandemic hit. Now its business model is crumbling.

TOKYO — Strands of bleached blond hair falling on eyes smeared with kohl, low rise skinny jeans, an oversized wallet hanging out of their back pocket... These "host boys' wait for their midnight shifts in front of the Otsuu restaurant in Kabukicho, Tokyo's "hot" district. This is also the stomping ground of yakuzas, Japan's notorious gangsters.

Cabs block Hanamichi street as they pick up the first drunk customers of the evening. Hawkers swarm everywhere, looking to lure new clients into their clubs or convince lost young women to start a career in nightlife. Watching the hubbub unfold to the echoes of booming sound systems, you would never guess the Japanese capital was under a state of emergency.

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LA STAMPA
Clémence Guimier

Sicilian Mafioso Teaches 9 Year-Old Granddaughter To Count Dirty Money

Grandpa, pass the unmarked 20s....

There are countless ways to teach a kid mathematics: fingers, peas in bowls, catchy songs — or, like this Italian grandpa from Partinico, Sicily, by counting dirty money.

As Italian daily La Stampa reports, after taking his nine-year-old granddaughter to school or to the swimming pool, the suspected mobster would sell cocaine. Later, after the deal was done, he would turn to the girl to help tally up his daily gains, using her as his personal cashier-in-training as he taught her to count bills.

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Economy
Floriana Bulfon

How Crime Is Mutating To Cash In On The Pandemic

Across the globe, mafia syndicates, white-collar criminals, hackers and scammers are finding novel ways to profit from the ongoing health crisis.

Nothing will be the same as before. For everyone, the pandemic is disrupting lives. But for a few, it also offers an opportunity for profit.

This new criminal market has sprung up to siphon earnings off the virus, and it is spreading just as quickly as COVID-19. With the urgent necessities of this health emergency, mob bosses and entrepreneurs have teamed up, leading to a mutation of our idea of "criminal association" that knows no boundaries.

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Germany
Airen

Straight Outta Kölnberg: Inside Germany's 'Hood Video' Boom

Criminal turned YouTuber Max Cameo is one of several German vloggers using their knowledge of the streets to create compelling portraits of Europe's toughest neighborhoods.

Crazy Aka's eyes wander over a 25-story apartment building in Kölnberg, a tower-block ghetto on the outskirts of Cologne. "Someone once threw a dead junkie's body from the 11th floor here," the German rapper says. "In broad daylight, just to save themselves hassle from the police."

As if to prove his point, a garbage bag falls from the sky and bursts open on the rubbish-strewn concrete below.

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BBC

The Latest: Myanmar Toll Tops 500, Suez Unstuck, Mafia Fail

Merhaba!*

Welcome to Tuesday, where the death toll among pro-democracy protesters tops 500 in Myanmar, Suez Canal gets unstuck at last, and a mafioso's love of food (and tattoos) is his downfall. Le Monde also reports from Belarus, where Lukashenko's regime is doing everything it can to avoid new mass protests.*Turkish

• Myanmar protests top 500 deaths: Myanmar protesters launch a "garbage strike" by leaving trash at intersections in Yangon to oppose military rule, as the death toll among pro-democracy protesters surpasses 500.

• Britain won't share vaccines for now: Already far outpacing European neighbors' vaccination rollouts, the UK said today it won't send any vaccines to other countries until all of its adult population gets the jab. Canada meanwhile suspends use of AstraZeneca vaccine for those 55 and younger while it investigates rare cases of blood clotting.

• World leaders' call: In an article published in several international newspapers, 24 world leaders are calling for a global pandemic treaty to improve cooperation and transparency in case of future outbreaks. China, the United States and Russia were absent from the signatories of the letter.

• Bolsonaro reshuffle: Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has replaced six ministers in a major cabinet reshuffle as he faces mounting pressure amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

• Suez Canal reopens: Traffic resumes in Egypt's Suez Canal after the stranded container ship Ever Given, which blocked the canal for nearly a week, was finally freed by salvage teams.

• Google's "eco-friendly" routes: Google Maps app will start directing drivers along "eco-friendly" routes that are estimated to generate less carbon emissions based on traffic and other factors.

• Mobster chef betrayed by tattoos: A fugitive Italian mafia member was arrested in the Dominican Republic after he was identified through his body tattoos … on his Italian cooking videos on YouTube.

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LA STAMPA
Chiara Baldi

In Italy, Confiscated Mob Villas Handed Over To Needy Families

Buccinasco, a town just outside of Milan, was quietly invaded decades ago by the ‘Ndrangheta mob from the southern region of Calabria. But a new program could be sweet revenge.

BUCCINASCO — Giulia prepares lunch for her two-year-old son Luca and smiles. "It's nice here," the teenage mother says.​

Giulia, just shy of turning 18, is what Social Services call a "fragile mother." But the courts have recently given her one last chance to keep custody of her child. She'll try to do so with the help of social workers present 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in an apartment inside a villa in a small city of about 28,000 that is just south of Milan.

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