The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
The German newspaper Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung had access to part of the documentation of the Federal Criminal Police Office on the presence of the Camorra in Germany.
Specifically, it appears that the Calabrian mafia is better organized in Germany than was previously known. According to German investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), it is assumed that the ‘Ndrangheta has its own control body in this country, called the Crime of Germany. Its most important task is to mediate between the interests of individual family clans. Outside Italy, the ‘Ndrangheta does not have such a body in any other European country.
Investigations carried out by investigators show that the secret body meets at least once a year and the top of this organization is made up of nine members. The head of the committee, the Head of Crime, is appointed by the most important representatives of the ‘Ndrangheta in Germany.
The Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta would have introduced the crime of Germany in the years following the “mafia killings of Duisburg”.
Up to here the hard facts. Well, despite this fundamental discovery in Germany, the silence and the omerta on the subject have been present for years now, despite the numerous investigations conducted by both the Italian and foreign authorities, proving how, precisely in Germany, the mafia has invested in considerably to the country’s economic growth.
In fact, Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra continue to be economically very powerful also thanks to the money that is obtained from the drug trade, laundered in Germany through
the purchase of apartments, hotels, pizzerias and restaurants and have stakes in German firms and companies. It is no coincidence that both the Attorney General of Palermo Roberto Scarpinato and Nicola Gratteri, the prosecutor of the Republic of Catanzaro, have repeatedly stressed that the mafia in Germany wants the Germans to think that it does not exist.
In fact, it no longer needs to be violent but through money laundering it can heavily affect the legal economy despite the Duisburg massacre on 15 August 2007, in which six boys were murdered with 55 gunshots (Marco Marmo 25 years, Francesco Giorgi 16, Francesco Pergola 22, Marco Pergola 19, Sebastiano Strangio 38, Tommaso Francesco Venturi 18).
Now, the widespread presence of organized crime in Germany – and in Europe – also depends on the absence of the crime of mafia-type criminal association, which allows investigations to be opened even on the basis of suspicion of belonging to a clan as Gratteri repeatedly denounced. but as the CRIM Commission (on organized crime, corruption and money laundering) had also requested in 2013, then chaired by Sonia Alfano who had managed to obtain from Strasbourg the approval of a single anti-mafia text in an attempt to harmonize the rules at European level.
However, all this has remained a dead letter. Only through harmonization from the point of view of criminal law is an efficient synergy between the various police offices at European level possible, as Gratteri has emphasized for years. The paradox that one cannot help but observe is that while criminal organizations have been able – and are able – to coordinate internationally, states – through their investigative apparatuses – have not yet been able to find a common line.
It goes without saying that these serious shortcomings have done nothing but benefit organized crime.
