Word: mafia
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Other notable users of U.S. shell companies: Viktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms trafficker; the Sinaloa drug-trafficking cartel; and Semion Mogilevich, the "brainy don" of Russian mafia dons, recently named on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. "Each of these examples involves the relatively rare instance in which law enforcement identified the perpetrator misusing the U.S. shell companies," senior Justice Department official, Jennifer Shasky, told a Senate panel recently. Added a senior Treasury official before the same hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: "Years of research and law-enforcement investigations have conclusively demonstrated...
...region of Calabria exposed deep conflicts over race and immigration in Italy. A Jan. 7 attack on African residents sparked clashes in the town of Rosarno that left more than 50 people hurt, including migrant workers, native Italians and police. Opposition leader Pier Luigi Bersani blamed the melee on "Mafia, exploitation, xenophobia and racism," while Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said Italians had been too tolerant of illegal immigration. Hundreds of immigrants were evacuated and more than 10 suspected mafiosi arrested...
...Ironically, though, southern Italy's crime clans seem like a welcome wagon for the immigrants at the beginning, providing a deceptively accepting community for newcomers. "For the Mafia to keep them as low-priced labor, they create this atmosphere of tolerance," Saviano says. "They actually live better down there than in Milan. They are treated and paid like slaves, but the human relationships are warmer than those you would find in Milan. Africans say the Italian girls look them in the eyes in Calabria, while in the north they wouldn't." (See pictures of migrants being forced out in France...
...While the shootings were the apparent spark of the riots, the global economic downturn was a more distant cause. With budgets tightening, the E.U. cut its aid to southern Italian farmers, reducing the need for manual labor. "The Mafia wants to earn the same profits, and the workers are becoming a burden," Saviano says. Authorities have also turned a blind eye to their problems. Rather than increase social services or workplace regulations, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's administration has taken an increasingly popular anti-immigrant stance. About 1,000 of the African migrants in Rosarno were carted off to detention...
...Saviano disagrees. "It's obvious they have let the Mafia freely do with the immigrants as they wish," he says. "When they undergo injustice, the immigrants have enormous difficulties speaking up about it, even when they have been abused by their own community." He adds, however, that this may be starting to change. "They are not like Italian workers, who will just leave if they don't like it. They protest because these jobs are the best situation they can have," he says. "As a southern Italian, I would tell these people, 'Stay. Please don't leave us alone with...