Italian police arrest 91 mafia members

Source: New Europe

May 13 2020

By Elena Pavlovska

Dozens of alleged members of the Sicilian mafia were arrested in simultaneous raids across the entire country, Italian media reported on Tuesday.

The arrests were made by the Guardia di Finanza, which is in charge of financial crimes and regularly tasked with bringing down organised crime figures. They also seized assets amounting to €15 million.

Among those arrested were 91 bosses, deputies, extortionists and figureheads of the Acquasanta, Arenella, Ferrante, and Fontana families, which have historically exercised control over parts of the Sicilian capital Palermo.

They are being charged with money laundering, drug trafficking, sports fraud, receiving stolen goods, extortion, and belonging to a mafia organization. Charges also relate to corruption in the Palermo fruit and vegetable market.

Authorities fear that the mafia may be using the coronavirus pandemic to increase its power even as violent crime dropped sharply because of the lockdown.

Police also arrested a former Big Brother contestant accused of acting as a frontman for the mob.

Faced with the Covid-19 crisis, the Italian mafia sees business opportunities

Source: France24
May 2 2020
By Melissa Barra

Italy’s mafia has worked out how to profit from the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crash. From offering opportunistic social aid and usurious loans to new business investments, the mafia is all set to exploit the vulnerable.

This is not the first time that mafia families have identified an easy business opportunity. In 1980, an earthquake struck Naples and the Campania region, killing almost 2,700 people. The Neapolitan arm of the mafia, the Camorra, quickly developed their construction enterprise and secured much of the reconstruction work.

In 2009, the former director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, said he had evidence that money from criminal organisations had been the only liquid investment capital used by Italian banks during the financial crash.

Now, more than a decade later, in an article published in La Repubblica in March, journalist Roberto Saviano warns that this new coronavirus crisis offers the mafia a "lucrative opportunity".

At the start of April, Italian police seized half a million euros in cash hidden in a van driven by people linked to the Calabrese arm of the mafia called 'Ndrangheta. The van was coming from Eastern Europe when it was stopped at Italy’s northern border, according to the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

"This is a very important case. In general, a lot of drugs are seized but rarely money, and even less often do we have money that has been stored outside and then repatriated to Italy,” Fabrice Rizzoli, a specialist in serious crime and author of "La Mafia de A à Z" (The Mafia from A to Z), told FRANCE 24. "This means that the families are trying to bring in aid for the population."

Food baskets and SME loans

Faced with a dramatic increase in people on the poverty line, the Italian government announced the distribution of €400 million in shopping vouchers. The Italian agricultural union Coldiretti reported that requests for food aid from charity organisations such as Caritas increased by 30% in March, according to AFP.

At the same time, the authorities and several media outlets noted that mafia groups started distributing their own food baskets to families facing financial difficulties. Some considered this both a strategy of recruitment and of social consensus. It coincided, too, with a number of key mafia bosses being allowed to exchange their prison cells for house arrest, thereby returning to the territories they controlled.

In the underprivileged ZEN district of Palermo, the brother of Cosa Nostra's boss, Giuseppe Cusimano, was spotted distributing food through a charity close to the cartel.

"It is hard to know exactly how much of this goes on," said Rizzoli, who explains that such largesse buys loyalty. "In return, the mafia asks for 'services': to hide weapons or a fugitive, to employ a cousin, to display the family’s mozzarella in place of a competitor..."

Statistics released by the Interior Ministry at the end of April showed a 66% drop in crime compared to the same period last year. However, another figure was on the rise: money-lending was up 9.1%.

The lockdown and the resulting economic catastrophe has put many small businesses at risk of bankruptcy. "Banks tend to lend little to SMEs (small and medium enterprises). They must then turn to more shadowy operations and the mafia offers them fresh, albeit dirty, money," Clotilde Champeyrache, a lecturer at the University of Paris 8, a mafia specialist and author of "La Face cachée de l'économie" (The Hidden Face of the Economy) explained to FRANCE 24.

"In normal times, the rates for this kind of money-lending are extremely difficult to pay back," said Champeyrache. "Today, the crisis is enormous, so there's a real demand for money. And, during Covid-19, rates will be more reasonable in order to get as many people as possible under the mafia's thumb."

According to Amedeo Scaramella, of the San Giuseppe Foundation Moscato organisation, which fights against such loans, the mafia traps borrowers by then raising interest by up to 300%.

Old business and new deals

Though Europe has tightened controls at its borders and nations imposed lockdowns, the drugs business has hardly been impacted -- at least not in the wholesale market.

"Retail trade may be more limited now, but cocaine and heroin production has not stopped,” said Champeyrache. “There seems to have been a boom in the drug market before lockdown. Consumers and mafias had made provisions.”

At the end of March, the son of an infamous leader of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta was arrested when he was discovered digging up half a ton of cocaine in a garden. The police noticed him because he was not respecting the lockdown regulations.

Historically, Italian mafias have also invested heavily in areas of legal activity, an example being healthcare. In 2010, an investigation by the Anti-Mafia Commission brought down the director of the Pavia health agency, Carlo Antonio Chiriaco. It was revealed that he was the representative of the 'Ndrangheta in this Lombardy city.

"Criminal families infiltrate the health service by providing services legally through cleaning, laundry, security and equipment businesses," Rizzoli said. "In these times of Covid-19, it is important for hospitals to get supplies wherever they can, it is an emergency. It may later be discovered that some suppliers are linked to the mafia."

In an article in Elle, Italian author Roberto Saviano expanded further. "The Camorra already seems to have invested in the most profitable business of the moment - trade in masks, gloves and hydroalcoholic gel."

Post-crisis: tenders and corona bonds...

Experts all agree on one point: Italy’s criminal organisations will benefit the most from the recovery.

"By distributing food baskets, by finding a way to enter the homes of poor families, the mafia is not just looking to recruit. It is also giving people directions on how they should vote, and these will be at least in part respected," says Rizzoli. In this way, it reinforces its main activity: securing tenders.

"As soon as there are calls for tenders in the building and public works sector, at least in southern Italy, the mafia tries to win them through their legal companies," said Champeyrache.

According to Saviano, Italian criminal organizations will also take advantage of bankrupt sectors to invest in new markets. "Who might possibly buy up the tourist resorts on the Côte d'Azur or the Costa del Sol that have been destroyed by the 2020 tourism crisis?" he asks ironically.

In an editorial in the German newspaper Die Welt, journalist Christoph B. Schiltz called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to "stand firm" in her refusal of a distribution of ‘corona bonds’ by the European Union. He insisted they would result in money from Brussels raining down into the wallets of the Italian mafia. Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio described this stance as "shameful and unacceptable".

Rizzoli confirmed that "the mafia will try as much as possible to torpedo public aid". Last January, Italian police dismantled a mafia network in Tortorici, Sicily, which had embezzled €10 million of European funds earmarked for agriculture.

"These incidents happen outside Italy too," he said. In Corsica, suspicions of fraud involving agricultural aid had been estimated at €36 million between 2015 and 2019. The anti-corruption association Anticor has filed a complaint.

Similarly, journalist and mafia specialist Petra Reski has been warning for many years about Calabrian networks at work in Germany. She believes the German justice system is ill-equipped to combat them.

Battle against the mafia

Italy is rife with organised crime. Its anti-mafia defence system is the most sophisticated in the world. Unlike France or Germany, Italy has three major institutional bodies dedicated to the fight against criminal organisations. These are within the justice system, the ministry of the interior and the parliament.

"In Italy it's an offence to be associated with the mafia, but not in other European countries," said Champeyrache. Adopted in 1982, this measure makes it possible to arrest those who are hiding behind the crime and also high-ranking officials who don't get their hands dirty.

"The interior ministry takes the fight against the mafia’s embezzlement of public money very seriously," said Champeyrache. She says the coronavirus crisis and lockdown have not slowed down the Italian justice system.

She does warn that Europe’s lack of engagement only serves to bolster the mafia in their aim to become part of the establishment. “If Brussels doesn't help Italy in times of crisis, it will enable the mafia to continue to build their societal legitimacy."

Cyprus launches probe into Russian mafia money

Hermitage has has flight records showing visits to Cyprus by the Klyuev gang at key moments in the scam .

Πηγή: EUobserver
By ANDREW RETTMAN
Dec 14 2012

BRUSSELS - Cyprus has opened an investigation into evidence that stolen Russian tax money linked to the murder of Sergei Magnitsky was laundered through its banks.

Mokas, its anti-money-laundering unit, in an email to EUobserver on Thursday (13 December), said: "At this point ... in Cyprus there is an open investigation on this matter." It noted: "Mokas is conducting the investigation, which functions within the office of the attorney general."

It added that the probe already began some time ago.

But it went ahead with some reluctance.

Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian accountant, was killed in jail in 2009 after he exposed a huge tax embezzlement by a criminal gang - "the Klyuev group" - involving high ranking officials in the Russian interior ministry and its internal intelligence service, the FSB.

Lawyers for his former employer, the UK-based Hermitage Capital investment fund, submitted evidence to Cyprus' attorney general in July.

Its papers, including copies of financial transfers - seen by this website - show that $31 million of the tax money was moved out of Russia using five Cypriot banks: Alpha Bank, Cyprus Popular Bank, FBME Bank, Privatbank International and Komercbanka.

They also show that Dmitry Klyuev, the alleged ringleader, owns a Cypriot-based firm called Fungamico, has an account at the Bank of Cyprus and visited Cyprus with his associates at the time the money went missing.

But Cyprus in October said it must check with Moscow to see if the money was really stolen before it could move ahead.

The Magnitsky probe is unwelcome on many fronts.

No-questions-asked banking services for Russian clients are an important source of income for Cyprus, where Russians have stashed up to $26 billion, according to the German intelligence service, the BND.

The Magnitsky case also raises the question if Cyprus is a fit place for EU taxpayers to insert €11 billion of bailout money, in a deal currently in discussion with EU institutions and the International Monetary Fund.

Nikos Christodoulides, a Cypriot EU presidency spokesman, told EUobserver that even if the Russian mafia did use its banks "it does not mean there are problems with all the other [Russian] accounts."

He added that "the two issues [the bailout and money-laundering] are not related at all."

Another Cypriot spokesman, Costas Yennaris, added: "They [EU lenders] have focused more on the management of the banks than on the content of their work [in the bailout talks]."

For some European politicians, the issues should be linked.

Dominic Raab, a British Conservative Party MP, is one of four national parliamentarians - also from Finland, Germany and the Netherlands - who have urged their administrations to look into the matter.

"Britain should make every effort to ensure that its ... funds are not being used to bail out any country that cannot or will not prevent its financial system from being misused by the Russian mafia," Raab wrote to British finance minister George Osborne on 21 November.

Meanwhile, the news the EU presidency country has promised to lift the lid on Magnitsky comes at a tricky moment in EU-Russia diplomacy.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is in Brussels on 21 December for an EU-Russia summit.

Magnitsky was already in the air because US lawmakers on 6 December passed a law forcing the state department to put a visa ban and asset freeze on Russian officials implicated in the affair.

If US President Barack Obama signs the bill in the coming days, as expected, it is likely to trigger Russian retaliation and to put extra pressure on the EU to do something as well.

For its part, the EU foreign service shows no sign of using its powers to propose EU-level sanctions, however.

Its spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic, told this website also on Thursday that Magnitsky will not be a big feature of the Putin meeting because the case was already discussed by low-level diplomats at a "human rights dialogue" on 7 December.

She said Russia's own investigation into his death has been "very limited ... not adequate."

She also said Brussels has "noted" that the European Parliament and parliaments in the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK have called for EU action in non-binding resolutions.

But she added: "A decision on restrictive measures would be for member states to take in unanimity."

Mafia: The map of 'Ndrine in the world

Click on the map to enlarge

Πηγή: Milanomafia

2010

The presence of the Mafia families in the five continents of the last report prepared on the basis of the police in Reggio Calabria established after the attack on the offices of the Procura generale di Reggio Calabria
Are in South America and in much of Europe, but also in Africa and Australia. The calabrian gangs have conquered the world. MilanoMafia.com offers a new map of the presence of the thighs of the 'Ndrangheta developed on the basis of the last report of the carabinieri in Reggio Calabria, written just hours after the attack to the courts of Reggio Calabria. Click on the map to enlarge.

EUROPE. It starts from Belgium where there are the gangs of Ascona and Bellocco.Families active in Bruxelles especially in money laundering and drug trafficking. But the Netherlands is the european capital of trafficking in cocaine (along with Italy). Here are the families Belfiore, Nirta-Strangio and Ursini. Along with the cocaine trade is also that of ecstasy and LSD. The Netherlands in recent decades has also become a favorite destination for fugitives and to reinvest the cash trafficking cocaine buying properties and businesses. Not even England is sheltered by the 'Ndrangheta. In the area of London are men of families Macrì and Ursini, experts in trafficking and drug dealing. The nearby Ireland has instead been colonized by men of the Morabito clan which have close business with IRA men for the sale of weapons and explosives. Not save even the Luxembourg, where the skin has a network of money laundering, while in Poland are the men of the family Iamonte to control investment. If Bulgaria and Croatia are involved in drug trafficking, in agreement with the slave gangs, Romania's capital Bucharest and in particular in recent years has become a popular destination for industrial activities and money laundering with the families Sena and Pino. Ukraine is the land of the traffickers instead of toxic waste, while Russia and especially Moscow was the goal of family Mazzaferro. In the Russian capital's 'ndrine bought real estate, banks, hotels, casino, businesses and dealing with money laundering and counterfeiting of rubles and dollars. According to the report 2010 of the policemen, France with the cities of Clermont Ferrand, Marseille, Nice, Toulon, Toulouse, and the entire area of the Costa Azzurra, is a privileged area for the purchase of property, money laundering and trafficking in cocaine in alliance with the clans in Marseilles. The nearby Spain is instead the historic port to Europe for South American drug traffickers, particularly in the province of Cadiz and Ibiza and Marbella. Here are the clans Di Giovine, Talia and Ferrazzi.Ferrazzo clan that is active in Switzerland not only recycling, but also for hashish trafficking and arms, together again with Di Giovine, in Mazzaferro and Paviglianiti. Trafficking in hashish and heroin, which also covers Greece, course of passage to the cultivation of poppy in the Middle East. But is Germany, which confirms the european capital of the 'Ndrangheta export. Many cities affected by the mafia infiltration: Aachen, Blaustein, Bochum, Bous, Deizisau, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Hagen, Krefeld, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Monaco Munich, Mannheim, Mulheim an der Ruhr, Munster, Neukirchen-Vluyn, Stuttgart and the areas of Baden-Wurttemberg, Thuringia and Warstein. It is no coincidence then that is precisely the scene of several bloody Duisburg massacre 'ndrangheta over the border on August 15, 20007. Infiltration in Germany are many and have ancient roots. They range from the purchase of real estate, to purchase of stores and participation in the world steel industry. But with the trafficking of cocaine, that of weapons and kidnapping of people, there is also the market of counterfeit and control of trafficking in migrants. There are many familiy: Carelli, Cariari, Critelli, Farao, Giampaolo, Giorgi, Grande Aracri, Iamonte, Mazzaferro, Mollica, Morabito, Vottari, Nirta, Pelle, Romeo e Strangio.

AFRICA. There's drugs, but there are also wastes, the traffic of diamonds and that of raw materials. One of the countries on the african continent to greater infiltration of the calabrian crime and Morocco, the historic port of loads of drugs from South America to Europe and privileged port for the smuggling of hashish and marijuana. In Morocco there are men of the clan Coluccio, and families Di Giovine, Sergi, Marando and Morabito. In Togo, in the heart of central Africa, there are the gangs Mancuso and Pesce involved in cocaine trafficking. The commodities market is at the center of infiltration in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) to extract coltan, a mineral used in the very expensive nanotechnology. Are not because the 'ndrangheta handle the traffic of radioactive materials along with the local crime clan. And the business of waste is an important resource of the mafia in Africa with the disposal of toxic substances in Kenya and Somalia. In South Africa, and particularly in the area of Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg, the clans are based in the diamond market.

ASIA - OCEANIA. The Middle East is the capital of the world production of opium. In Lebanon there are men of the powerful clan of the De Stefano that treat trafficking in heroin and hashish. While in neighboring Syria are the leaders of the clan Di Giovine and Morabito to control the market of brown sugar. But the 'Ndrangheta is also present in turbulent Pakistan offer treatment cocaine trafficking to Europe, whereas in Turkey gangs Aquino, Papalia, Paviglianiti and D'Agostino control the heroin trade and have a close relationship with the baba, the turkey's powerful mafia that deals with transportation and importation of drugs. In Thailand, these are men of Bastoni and Ianni who traffic cocaine. The strip of Indonesia is instead used for money laundering. Land of immigrants to Australia instead, historical goal of 'ndrine. Here the presence of families of Locride has also been confirmed by numerous investigations in the eighties and nineties. Among the cities are reported Adelaide, Canberra, Griffith, Michelago, and areas of Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Perth, Victoria and Yelardin.The gangs involved in the cultivation of hemp, but also the control of prostitution, the smuggling of counterfeit currency, gambling, and trafficking in arms and heroin. Australia is so colonized by the calabrian clans to register as a phenomenon of racketeering and extortion. Many of the families present, the Barbaro Papalia, Sergi, Perre, Trimboli, Viola, Musitano, Zappia, the same rooted in the province of Milan, to the thighs Condello, Alvaro, Agresti, Giorgi, Ielasi, Romeo, Polifroni, Polimeni , Rizzotti, Tremarchi.

AMERICA. In the U.S. the 'Ndrangheta is active in the trafficking of cocaine and heroin. Men of the clan Sergi, Commisso, and Racco e Archino, are present in areas of New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and New Jersey, Florida and Connecticut. The presence of the Calabrian clan then focuses on the American continent in Canada, where - it is no accident - in August 2008 he captured the fugitive Giuseppe Coluccio. The boss of Marina di Gioiosa Ionica was arrested at Toronto, but the calabrian ndrine are also present in areas of Montreal, Ontario, Vancouver, Vaughan, Hamilton, British Columbia and Quebec. Many families in the area Canadian: Commisso, Costa, Musitano, Papalia, Cotroni, Di Giovine, Gentile, Gallo, Rizzuto and Violi. Among the most important activities on money laundering, trafficking in heroin, cocaine and weapons. In Mexico, the emissaries of the thighs are rather close relationship with Los Zetas very deep and Home Aquino clan, Coluccio, Macrì, Schiripa entered into a number of investigations, not least the operation Solare of Catanzaro Dda. Amid tons of cocaine trafficked by mexican gangs. In the state of El Salvador in Central America, is instead is Nirta clan active in cocaine trafficking. The Caribbean, the Dominican Republic are these men of the clan Cataldo specialized in drug trade.

SOUTH AMERICA. The South American continent is the hottest area for the trafficking of drugs, and the 'Ndrangheta has here its most important fiefs. It starts from Colombia, the largest producer of cocaine in the world. In Colombia there are gangs of men Anello, Aquino, Libri, Marando, Mazzaferro, Molè, Mollica, Morabito, Nirta, Paviglianiti, Piromalli, Sergi, Talia, Tolone. In Colombia the clans - they write the police - are responsible for purchase of cocaine with the cooperation of the United Self-Defense of Colombia and dealing with the Cali cartel. The presence of emissaries of the 'Ndrangheta in the trade of cocaine is also reported in Ecuador, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay. In Bolivia, a country with great production of coca, the gangs have operational bases in the area of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Even a natural paradise like the Netherlands Antilles, however, can hide the men of the thighs. Especially those in the Mazzaferro clan active in the purchase of cocaine. Venezuela is instead a place to invest for the calabrian clan in particular for families Aquino, Coluccio, Tuozzolo. The calabrian here, according to the report of the weapon, have no contact with the feared clans of Cosa Nostra Cuntrera-Caruana very active in drug trafficking. But with drug trafficking in Venezuela, the 'Ndrangheta is responsible for recycling, house construction and investment in the world of industrial manufacture. In Peru, more regard to trafficking in cocaine, are men of the clan Paviglianiti, while in Brazil and in particular people living in Fortaleza and thighs Morabito and Mazzaferro, still active in drug trafficking. But business with the drug traffickers are also made in Argentina where there are still men of the thighs along with Morabito and Mazzaferro, Piromalli and Talia, historic allies of Morabito. In particular, the cartel of drug trafficking is concentrated in the Calabria region of Moròn, (cg)

Smuggling of migrants and other traffics

Πηγή: Bright
by Matteo Tacconi

April 1st, 2011

Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine: turbulent, restless lands, where conflicts and revolutions take place continuously. Lands where there seems to be no future, harassed by poverty and misery. People tend to leave these lands. Sometimes they leave on their own will, in order to find and build a new, better life for themselves. Sometimes, they are forced to leave because of political reasons.

You go West, where else? You escape throughout Turkey, because between the East and the West there is Anatolia. A real boon for Turkish Mafia. These criminals carefully follow the trends of criminal markets and have happily rushed headlong into this promising business.

Figures show that the trafficking of migrants generates sky-rocketing profits for criminal gangs operating in this sector. Researcher Koulani Vasiliki wrote in her paper (Human Smuggling and Trafficking in Turkey), published in July 2009 by the Research Institute for European and American Studies of Athens) that over 200 thousand migrants enter Turkey illegally each year and one out of four relies on the help of the criminal network to enter the country and exit it, making their way to Europe, paying on average 1500-2000 dollars.

If these figures prove true, it turns out that smuggling generates from 75 to 100 million dollars every twelve months. Probably even a little more if you consider that these figures were provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in 2003, and definitely need to be updated.

The majority of migrants, mostly Iranians, Iraqis and Afghans but also many Turkish citizens decide to leave with the help of criminal networks, are trafficked, like heroin, mainly on the Turkish-Iranian border; it is from this border that the bulk of migrants arrive in Anatolia. This is due both to the characteristics of this border, which has traditionally been devoted to smuggling (heroin, weapons, gasoline and even livestock) and to the fact that other limes, especially the Turkish-Iraqi border, are more heavily militarized.

Immigrants are first gathered in the border town of Van. From there, traffickers lead them to Istanbul, making some intermediate stops along the route in various places; from Istanbul, migrants are then taken to Edirne, near the border with Europe. However, unlike the heroin trade, smugglers accompany their "freight" (this is what migrants are for traffickers) usually to Greece, less often to Bulgaria.

As estimated by Migreurop, a French association monitoring large migration flows, 150 thousand people a year try to make it into the Community territory from the Turkish-Greek border. How?

Traffickers make migrants wade across River Evros, marking the border between the two states. This can be done by foot, especially in the summer months, during which some stretches of the river are dry. Usually, however, the river is crossed aboard small and crumbling boats crammed with men and women.

You enter from Iran; you exit from Greece. But how does this whole "machine" for the smuggling of migrants work? Professor Ahmet İçduygu, a demography and migration expert who teaches at Koç University in Istanbul, outlined the profile of this “migration-machine” in a 2004 piece of research on migrant trafficking between Turkey and Greece published in the journal “Southeast European and Black Sea Studies,” under the title “Transborder Crime Between Turkey and Greece: human smuggling and its regional consequences.”

Professor İçduygu maintains that the trafficking of people to Europe via Turkey is based on a Ford-type assembly line, involving small groups of traffickers (the so-called kaçakçılar), each of which ensures the passage of migrants from one border to the other, from one city to another city. Traffickers’ groups in Van are in contact with Iranian groups, with whom they manage border crossing.

Later on, they bring the migrants into some other cities of Anatolia, hand them over to some other group which, in turn, takes care of transportation and hands them over to İstanbul criminal cells, which in the same way carry out the transfer of migrants to Edirne or elsewhere along the Turkish-Greek border, where local traffickers are in charge of organizing the border crossing. Once this border is crossed, if everything goes off smoothly, it is up to the Greek smugglers to play their part and so on, all along the Balkans or across the Mediterranean, with Europe as the final destination.

Just as in heroin smuggling, in the European territory the Turkish Mafia can rely on alliances with foreign criminal groups and with local branches of Turkish criminal groups rooted within the Turkish communities in EU countries.

There are two types of migrant smugglers’ cells in Turkey. Sometimes they are linked to a well-structured and specialized organization, a subsidiary of one of the large cupolas of the Turkish Mafia. Sometimes the cell is independent, acting only on its own behalf and placing itself in the international trafficking of migrants spontaneously, and just as spontaneously, the cell might leave the migrant trafficking market once it has achieved its goals. In this case, it might be replaced by another small organization taking the stage.

Each group of traffickers also has a clear division of labor. There are those in charge of forging false identity papers and visas, those who provide apartments and buildings where migrants are temporarily sheltered, those in charge of finding vehicles or vessels for the transport, the cashiers, those providing cellular phones and guaranteeing contacts with the organization in charge of taking over the migrants at the next step... The organization, in other words, is perfect. The machine is well-oiled and tested and generates amazing income.

Among major Turkish groups operating in this sector of the economy, the Mafia of Aksaray, a district in the European neighborhood of Istanbul, stands out. Until the late 1990s and the beginning of the next decade, Aksaray traffickers directly organized the travel of migrants by sea toward the Italian coasts, especially Puglia and Calabria. Now, as coastal patrolling grew more intense and the risks grew higher, traffickers prefer to carry migrants to Edirne, and from there to Greece. However, as Paola Monzon stated in her 2008 working paper “The smuggling of migrants by sea to Italy” for the Centre for International Political Studies (CESP), the route carrying migrants from Turkey to Calabria is being used again, although not as intensely as in old times, when Muammer Küçük ruled over the whole Mediterranean basin and organized regular huge landings of refugees and illegal immigrants on Italy’s Southern coasts.

When Küçük was arrested in Izmir in 2002, while he was preparing one of his “wrecks of the sea” carrying 200 people on board, each one of whom had been stripped of $2500, he was the almighty Turkish boss of migrant trafficking. Officially the owner of a phone shop in Istanbul, Küçük had gradually gained a leading role in this criminal sector: everyone had to pass through him sooner or later, everyone had to come to terms with him. Küçük accumulated a huge capital, estimated at eight million Euros. He could have collected an immense capital if the Turkish police, after lengthy investigations carried out with the help of police branches of Crotone and Reggio Calabria, had not caught him with his hands in the cookie jar in Izmir.

Smashing Muammer Küçük’s group was a big success. But not the only one. In recent years, authorities have achieved good results in the fight against migrant traffickers, thanks to tighter border controls and more intense judicial activity. But the traffic always goes on and generates significant profits for those who control it. It seems that lately Kurdish groups, counting on a large basin of immigration inside Kurdistan and, like the Turkish Mafia, on the help of criminal cells nested within the Kurdish Diaspora in Europe, have gained an increasingly important role on this front, achieving a dominant position and challenging the primacy of the Aksaray Mafia.

The Aksaray groups, however, remain powerful and have imposed a near-monopoly in another sector: prostitution. It is estimated that thousands of women are enslaved by the baba and forced to suffer the cynical logic of the sex industry. Many of these women are from former Soviet republics: mostly from Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Moldova. Other women come from Iran and the Middle East. They are recruited in their home countries by local Mafia and sold to criminal organizations in Turkey, where they become the exclusive property of Turkish criminal groups. Therefore, not only migrants are smuggled.

In Turkey there is also trafficking of human beings. That is, there are migrants who remain in the country and end up in the tangle of Mafias. Among these unfortunate human beings, apart from women, there are also many irregular migrants, employed as seasonal workers in fields or as low-cost workers in factories. They live in precarious, sometimes sub-human, conditions. They live as slaves.

Other kinds of trafficking

Not only heroin. Even if the so-called ”brown sugar” is the most trafficked drug, other kinds of drugs are also trafficked in the Turkish territory. Allegedly, the newest trend in drug smuggling is cocaine. Recently, the police have seized increasing amounts of this kind of drug. According to some experts’ opinions, Turkish criminal groups have begun to carry cocaine to the markets of the Middle East, where demand is increasing, especially in cities like Beirut. However, internal consumption too absorbs a certain amount of the cocaine flow. Sometimes, traffickers may even trade a haul of cocaine in exchange for a certain amount of heroin.

The alliance between Turkish and Balkan drug lords plays a vital role in cocaine trafficking. Indeed, the Balkan drug lords are carving out a niche in this increasingly important market. Bulgarian and Romanian traffickers stand out, due to the fact that Bulgarian and Romanian ports (according to the Octa report by Europol, with Constanţa playing an increasingly important role) are cocaine "storage facilities:" cocaine is crammed into the holds of commercial vessels and transported by sea to Istanbul. From Istanbul, cocaine is then channeled on the roads of Anatolia, toward the border with Syria, the main transport corridor of drugs destined to the Middle East.

Turkey is also a transit country for ecstasy (391 thousand tablets seized in 2009) and synthetic drugs produced in Europe, especially in the Eastern segment of the continent. According to the 2009 Tadoc dossier, these drugs are also traded for heroin on their way to the final destination. In this case too, the primary target market is the Middle East rather than domestic consumers.

The same can be said about amphetamine, trafficked on an even larger scale (nearly three million tablets seized in 2009). From Eastern Europe, amphetamine is carried to Turkey, where the bulk of the flow is then channeled via Syria to the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, where demand is steadily growing, except a small portion of drugs that remains in Turkey.

Of course, among the drugs smuggled in Turkey there is cannabis, the most produced, trafficked, seized, and used drug in the world. In Turkey, especially in the South-East Anatolia area, cannabis is widely raised and the harvest, in exponential growth, is sufficient to meet the internal market’s demand; therefore, there is no need for import anymore. There are no more seizures at the border. According to the latest Tadoc report, however, a steadily increasing number of internal seizures have been made in the Turkish territory: 6 tons of cannabis were seized in 2005, 9.7 in 2006, 13.4 in 2007, 20.5 in 2008, and 25.7 in 2009.

Public opinion was amazed by a piece of news reported last summer on the discovery of a giant cannabis plantation in the village of Hasanbey (in the province of Van), where more than two billion plants were raised. It was the largest anti-marijuana operation ever undertaken in Turkey: the eradication operations required the work of hundreds of military for five consecutive days.