Italian Premier Enrico Letta announced today that his government is developing measures to ramp up law enforcement against the country’s Mafia groups with a particular emphasis on asset seizures as reported by ANSA:
“It will be a relentless commitment on the part of the government, in line with the spirit of a country determined to achieve important results,” said Letta at the presentation of a government anti-mafia report. The premier said the new initiative would “especially go after criminal assets.”
Italian authorities have seized assets worth 15 billion euros ($20.4 billion) from suspected Mafia fronts since 1992 as reported by ANSA: “some seven billion of those 14.475 billion euros in assets were seized definitively, while the rest was returned or is still being reviewed.”
U.S. law enforcement could take a page from Italy’s anti-Mafia playbook by targeting the so-called legitimate businesses which front for and otherwise associate with the mob families. Indeed, the Treasury Department should designate New York’s five families as transnational criminal organizations under Executive Order 13581 which would freeze their U.S. assets and ban Americans from conducting business with them. Inexplicably, the American authorities have ignored this powerful tool in going after the Italian mob and left its economic infrastructure in place.
Further reading that may be of interest:
Filed under: Mafia, Organized Crime Tagged: 'Ndrangheta, Asset Seizure, Calabrian Mafia, Camorra, Cosa Nostra, Executive Order 13581, Neapolitan Mafia, Puglian Mafia, Sacra Corona Unita, Sicilian Mafia
