18 bn seized from mafia in 5 yrs

(ANSA) - Rome, December 23 - Italian police have seized some 18 billion euros from Italy's three main mafias in the last five years, or over 1% of Italian GDP, according to a report published Monday.
    Goods and property worth some seven billion euros have been confiscated while a further 11 billion have been sequestered, the report said.
    The high command of the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) tax police said that "the attack on the property of organised crime has always been the hallmark of the corps and it has boosted and refined its ability to intercept the business, economic and financial interests of criminality, not only organised, but also in its more evolved form of economic and financial offshoots." It said the assets had been seized from persons who had been identified as "socially dangerous".
    As well as assets proper, the corps had gone after "safe-haven assets" including diamonds, precious metals, paintings and archaeological artefacts, it said.
    Italy's strongest and richest mafia is 'Ndrangheta from Calabria, which expanded to northern Italy in the 1980s and has since gone global after it cornered the European cocaine market.
    Then comes its older cousin Cosa Nostra from Sicily, which has been hit by police action following campaigns of assassination including anti-mafia crusaders Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
    The third biggest mafia is the Camorra from Naples, whose death threats have forced anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano into a police protection programme.
    There is also a fourth mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita (United Holy Crown, SCU), in Puglia.