THE Sicilian mafia and the US mobs as soon as managed a multi-million greenback trade of vice that spanned the Atlantic, ruling with bloody vengeance.
However as their energy base was slowly damaged by concerted efforts by authorities in each Italy and america, in order that they have been supplanted by extra ruthless gangsters in South America and Japanese Europe.
This week’s arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro, the “final godfather” and boss of the scary Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia, is seen by many as marking the tip of the fabled crime group.
Denaro spearheaded a brutal marketing campaign of terror within the Nineteen Eighties and 90s when the Cosa Nostra declared battle on the Italian state, murdering judges, bombing church buildings, and even declaring a vendetta towards the pope.
That he was caught dwelling simply 10 miles from his birthplace in western Sicily reveals how his inside circle had shrunk smaller and smaller over his 30 years on the run.
However as John Dickie, Professor of Italian at UCL defined, it’s only a signal of how far the notorious Cosa Nostra’s fortunes have fallen.
He instructed The Solar On-line: “Mafia bosses who go on the run keep of their native territory. That is the place their organisation and assist networks are, and after they can disguise most successfully.
“A era in the past, when Denaro went on the run, western Sicily was ‘hostile territory’ for the state.
“The mafia had given itself the suitable to kill anybody with impunity, and to take its extortion tax from any financial exercise, whether or not authorized or unlawful.”
Describing the mafia at the moment as a “shadow state,” he added that Sicily within the Nineties was at actual threat of turning right into a “narco” republic.
“Over the past 30 years, the Italian state has slowly gained again floor, and that has reduce away at Denaro’s assist community,” he stated.
“That assist community prolonged up and down the social scale, and included siblings and enterprise supporters.”
Dickie, creator of “Cosa Nostra: The Historical past of the Sicilian Mafia”, known as Denaro because the “final” of the foremost mafia bosses on the island.
“This represents the turning of the web page for Sicily, and it is one other signal that the Sicilian mafia is in a very unhealthy means,” he stated.
The Cosa Nostra is without doubt one of the 4 main mafia-type organisations lively in Italy immediately.
Of the three others, essentially the most {powerful} is the ‘Ndrangheta mafia based mostly in Calabria, southern Italy.
The opposite two are the Camorra centred across the southern port metropolis of Naples and the Sacra Corona Unita, based mostly in Puglia, additionally in southern Italy.
This represents the turning of the web page for Sicily, and it is one other signal that the Sicilian mafia is in a very unhealthy means
John Dickie
Whereas the ‘Ndrangheta has lengthy had hyperlinks to the cartels of South America, Dickie defined that the Cosa Nostra was as soon as omnipotent as a result of it had one thing the opposite mafia teams did not – a trans-Atlantic bridge.
With its sister organisation La Cosa Nostra in New York made up largely of the 5 ruling households, the Sicilian mafia had entry to the richest marketplace for unlawful items on the planet.
However within the Nineteen Seventies, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act got here into regulation.
This federal regulation, designed to fight organised crime within the US, allowed criminals to hit with prolonged penalties and a civil explanation for motion for his or her roles in prison organisations.
As Dickie defined: “The bridge has been damaged. This was a serious explanation for the decline of the Sicilian mafia.”
This was adopted within the Nineteen Eighties by the Fee Trial which focused American mobsters, and the Maxi Trial in Palermo, Sicily, which noticed 338 mobsters jailed.
Denaro’s arrest, due to this fact, is much less a hammer blow for the mafia in Sicily, however a mirrored image of how far its fortunes have fallen.
It additionally displays the decades-long battle by authorities and cops in Sicily to focus on the mob.
To reveal the chaos on the prime of the Cosa Nostra, its coordinating physique, the place the “Boss of Bosses” meets together with his deputies, hasn’t been capable of meet in particular person since 1993.
Dickie stated: “They’ve tried 4 occasions to reform and elect a brand new boss of bosses, however every time police have been watching and bugging them.”
This has seen various additional mobsters arrested, prosecuted and jailed whereas making an attempt to restart the fee.
“If you’re a mafia boss, what you are promoting will cross into different bosses’ territories,” he stated. “For instance, if authorities are constructing a street and also you need to take your reduce, the street will move into one other mafia boss’s territory.
“You want a presiding authority, or the state of affairs will descend into bloodshed. Issues do not work almost as easily or as neatly with out the fee.”
However the decline of the Cosa Nostra does not imply the tip of the mafia fully.
Whereas the Sicilian mafia’s ties to the US mob have been destroyed, the ‘Ndrangheta has a much more international attain.
“Italian mafia organisations are territorial,” Dickie stated. “They exist to regulate territory and be a shadow state.
“When the Cosa Nostra suffers, the residents and state win, not one other prison organisation.
“It means the liberty to run a enterprise with out extortion calls for.”
The Sicilian mafia is not plying the worldwide drug routes like they used to, Dickie defined.
However drug markets, that are extra of a “free-for-all” the Ndrangheta are actually much more profitable.
The arrest of Denaro, the final dwelling “godfather” of the Cosa Nostra’s so-called “bloodbath wing”, may permit the Ndrangheta to step into this void within the worldwide drug markets.
Italy’s former nationwide anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho instructed the Monetary Occasions: “His absconding highlighted the extraordinary energy of Cosa Nostra.
“His arrest has damaged this energy.”
However the place the mafia’s energy has subsided, different teams have swept in to take their place.
Europe has been hit by what Belgian federal police chief Eric Snoeck described as a “tsunami” of cocaine in recent times.
Some 240 tons of the drug had been seized in 2021 in keeping with Europol, almost 5 occasions greater than a decade earlier.
Europe has develop into a profitable marketplace for the massive drug cartels, delivery their good into the continent by way of main ports reminiscent of Antwerp and Rotterdam.
With Antwerp torn aside by gunbattles, Belgium’s chief prosecutor Johan Delmulle warned that the nation may quickly “be thought to be a narco-state,” the identical route that Sicily was feared to be heading within the Nineties when Denaro was at his top.
Cartels in Colombia and Mexico management the overwhelming majority of the world’s cocaine market, bringing their brutal violence to Europe.
Japanese European gangsters are additionally now accountable for medicine markets in lots of components of the continent.
However Denaro’s seize might not imply the dying of Cosa Nostra totally.
The mafia is barely ever as {powerful} as its community of corrupt officers it will probably depend on.
Denaro’s seize might give a brand new, hungrier management the prospect to stand up.