Can the mafia be beaten?

[DMB]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6841289.ece

Younger women on the island had at last found the confidence to hold out against organised crime, Pellegrino said. But she admitted: “We’re not immune from threats ourselves. We humiliate them, so we’ve become targets. Some of our members’ homes have been sent letter bombs. Our families are threatened but we won’t give up our campaign.”

According to Lidia Cervillera, 27, another organiser, visitors to Sicily would find it impossible to avoid propping up the mob, even if they tried to use only Addiopizzo firms. “We believe the Cosa Nostra still extorts £130m from Sicily.”

She added that the mob’s 10% levy included everything from taxis to car parks and ice-cream parlours. “My job is to persuade these small family businesses to say, ‘No! No more money for anything’.”

At the same time, tourists are being encouraged to go to restaurants that are part of the association such as Il Mirto e la Rosa, run by Antonella Sgrillo.

Cervillera’s mission is personal. Her uncle, a police officer who refused to take mafia bribes, was killed by a car bomb. Her mother was also threatened.

The trouble is that this is not new. They have to get sufficient momentum to cut off funds to the mafia.

[Free in Freeport]

Perhaps a better question to ask would be SHOULD the mafia be beaten. Their presence keeps in check violence from lesser gangs/mobs.

[Loren Pechtel]

Perhaps a better question to ask would be SHOULD the mafia be beaten. Their presence keeps in check violence from lesser gangs/mobs.

Disagree. Why would lesser gangs be violent without the mafia?

[Preno]

Best of luck to them. Organized criminals are the worst scum of the Earth (well, right below people who organize genocide).

The ideal solution would be to let the local population (who presumably know who they are) shoot them dead while the police turns the blind eye, but that's not really gonna work, is it?

[Gaojie]

What's the relationship between the police and the Mafia? Perhaps the local official have a "hands off" approach historically?

[Gaojie]

I've just read the wikipedia article on the mafia and according to it the police aren't enabling the mafia. I've only read the one article though.

[Valheru]

I work for a bank doing data warehousing, and a lot of the data that we move around, concerns Sarbanes-Oxley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act) auditing requirements. Most banks around the world are required to comply (under pain of HEFTY fines).

In addition to the SOX compliance, banks also have Basel Accord programs in place to manage operational risk, in terms of monitoring suspicious and fraudulent transactions, asset freezing, auditing (or outright refusing) transactions made by politically exposed individuals, maintaining and auditing lists of criminals and criminal organisations, terrorists and terrorist organisations, and so on.

Most of these things only started gaining SERIOUS momentum after the events of 9/11, and the amount of data being gathered on these sorts of people and organisations is STAGGERING.

At the end of the day, cold card cash is on the way out for mobsters in the modern day and age, and unless they hide gold bars under their mattresses, they're going to start finding themselves without liquidity, and under a harsh spotlight. Sure, small time mobstering will likely continue to slip under the financial radar, but that's where local authorities should step up to the plate.

There's nothing to bar mobsters if there isn't any political will to stop them, and that's what it boils down to.

[Ray Moscow]

Isn't much of organised crime created by outlawing stuff people want (like booze, drugs, or sex) and are going to get regardless? Legalisation empties the big money from these things and decreases mob crime as a result.

The Silcilian mafia is a bit different in its origins, I suppose.

[Valheru]

I think dealing with contraband is peanuts money.

The big money lies in extortion, and like what happened in the thirties, when it's effectively "legalized" (via bribery, assassination and terror), the end result is merely mobs fighting over territory, with innocent people caught in the crossfire.

[willynilly]

Police once accepting money from a mob family can pass on rivals activities, suspected busts of their family, evidence disappearance, items taken in raids like drugs and money. Not to mention busting prostitution houses and girls on the street while leaving certain ones alone. Eliminating competition obviously works.

[Celsus]

I work for a bank doing data warehousing, and a lot of the data that we move around, concerns Sarbanes-Oxley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act) auditing requirements. Most banks around the world are required to comply (under pain of HEFTY fines).

In addition to the SOX compliance, banks also have Basel Accord programs in place to manage operational risk, in terms of monitoring suspicious and fraudulent transactions, asset freezing, auditing (or outright refusing) transactions made by politically exposed individuals, maintaining and auditing lists of criminals and criminal organisations, terrorists and terrorist organisations, and so on.

Most of these things only started gaining SERIOUS momentum after the events of 9/11, and the amount of data being gathered on these sorts of people and organisations is STAGGERING.

At the end of the day, cold card cash is on the way out for mobsters in the modern day and age, and unless they hide gold bars under their mattresses, they're going to start finding themselves without liquidity, and under a harsh spotlight. Sure, small time mobstering will likely continue to slip under the financial radar, but that's where local authorities should step up to the plate.

There's nothing to bar mobsters if there isn't any political will to stop them, and that's what it boils down to.
Cleaning dirty money is easier than you think. Singapore is one of the great money laundering centres of the world, sad to say, and has been since independence (when we mostly cleaned money for Southeast Asian countries). It's one of the real reasons why we never get as affected by financial crises compared to other countries.

[Ray Moscow]

I think dealing with contraband is peanuts money.

The big money lies in extortion, and like what happened in the thirties, when it's effectively "legalized" (via bribery, assassination and terror), the end result is merely mobs fighting over territory, with innocent people caught in the crossfire.


I think the drug trade is way more than peanuts money.

The extortion racket is a different matter -- it can't be legalised away, only policed away.

[Celsus]

I think the drug trade is way more than peanuts money.
Yep (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/03/13/mexico.forbes.list/index.html) :o
The extortion racket is a different matter -- it can't be legalised away, only policed away.
Meh, legalised extortion is everywhere. It's called capitalism :p

[Preno]

I think dealing with contraband is peanuts money.

The big money lies in extortion, and like what happened in the thirties, when it's effectively "legalized" (via bribery, assassination and terror), the end result is merely mobs fighting over territory, with innocent people caught in the crossfire.lol no

Illegal trade in drugs, weapons and people are the three most profitable criminal industries globally.