Obama Reinvents the Wheel: Oust the Casalesi from the US Financial System

There is something which eludes me about the emphasis that has been placed on the banning of the Casalesi by the US Treasury Department. Out with their dirty money and banish any who do business with them. Sanctions aplenty for everyone.

Huh! I can’t understand all the excitement over something so logical: What self-respecting sovereign state could tolerate the Mafioso pollution of its own democratic strata?

Huh! I can’t understand all the excitement over something so normal. The more bizarre news would have been open acceptance of dirty Mafioso capital.

You might object: But it is fundamental that a state like the United States publicly take a stand to denounce the corrupting force of organized crime. Excuse me, dear objectors, but in your judgment is there a need to take a public stand against dirty capital in order to be credible? Is a Constitution not enough? Is the action of the judiciary not enough? Is the vigilance of civil society not enough? Is preventative and repressive daily action not enough? Is the alertness of Parliament — which is translated into law — not enough?

Huh! I really can’t understand such emphasis on something that sounds like a matter of course. We are aware that the Casalesi, like the Japanese Yazuka, cause a lot of pain to our markets. Good, bravo, encore! But remember, dear American politicians, those Italians who discover the rottenness after the Institutions have already been decaying from the inside for years. In short, a discovery — shouted to the four winds — too late.

I know well that politics is the art of contingency, but I would aim more towards a politics of preventative analysis, especially when it originates from those who lead Western democracy — like the United States. The beacon of democracy.

But I also know just as well that on the subject of financial transparency the Americans have something to teach about severity and a firm hand, but — who knows why — always after the scandals have broken (do you remember Enron?)

And then I ask myself: the Casalesi yes, and the ‘Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra not?

I remind the same Americans that the importance on a global scale of the management role of the ‘Ndrangheta in drug trafficking was already realized five years ago. The U.S. government announced publicly on June 1, 2008, that the Calabrese ‘Ndrangheta would be added to the black list of groups and individuals to which it is possible to apply the financial sanctions imposed by the Foreign Narcotics Designation Act of 1999, which targets drug trafficking.

And Cosa Nostra? Instead of running back to the past let’s look at contemporary history.

The inquiry commonly called ‘Paisan Blues’ led on March 10, 2010, to the issuing of 19 arrests and successively 21 orders to be remanded in custody. Contextually, there followed in the United States, in New York and in Miami, seven arrests of subjects accused of various crimes and circulating in the Italian-American Mafioso context.

This was an ulterior development of an intense and prolonged inquiry carried out by the Servizio centrale operativo della Polizia di Stato and the Squadra Mobile della Questura di Palermo, in collaboration with the FBI — within a more complex project of collaboration known as Project Pantheon — on the existing relations between the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, with particular reference to the families of the province of Palermo, and the American Cosa Nostra (the Gambino-Inzerillo family of New York).

“And indeed,” write the magistrates of the Direzione nazionale antimafia, Alberto Cisterna and Maurizio De Lucia, in the 2011 report, “the inquiries conducted in recent years have highlighted the renewed importance of historical relations existing between the two Mafiosi criminal organizations, as already surfaced within the operation Grande Mandamento; the operation Gotha; the various proceedings initiated after the arrest of Salvatore Lo Piccolo upon the supply of the documentation that was discovered on the occasion of his capture; and lastly, the proceeding as a result of which, on Feb. 7, 2008, was issued an order of arrest validated by the examining justice, who issued the relative order to be remanded in custody to 28 Mafiosi exponents from various families of the Mafiosi districts of the city of Palermo, for the crime of Mafioso criminal conspiracy and for the murders of Pietro Inzerillo and Antonino Inzerillo, having taken place in New Jersey in 1982 (operation Old Bridge).”

The inquiries that led to the proceeding ‘Paisan Blues’ were carried out secretly by the Italian and American investigative bodies. In June 2007 an inquiry was launched by the Servizio centrale operativo della Polizia and by the Squadra Mobile di Palermo (in conjunction with the FBI) into a subject born in Palermo but resident since 1998 in Miami, who surfaced as a subject particularly linked to the Mafiosi criminal environments both in the United States (in particular the Gambino family of New York) and in the city of Palermo.

Lastly, the “family” of Castellammare from the Gulf merits a particular mention, for its historically unrecognized importance and for the international projections that have brought, over the course of the years, numerous exponents to settle in the United States, filling top roles in the hierarchy of the American Cosa Nostra.

For all this and much more still (for example, the international connection between the ‘Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra and international terrorist organizations, which are not the prerogative only of the Camorra – on the contrary!) I do not understand this emphasis by the U.S. Treasury and the frenzy created by some of the media outlets.

So it will be, but I prefer the facts to the proclamations; and on this, yes, perhaps the Americans do have something to teach us. But I wouldn’t be so sure.