The investigation into an
alleged Mafia ring looting the Eternal City widened Monday as
six people including three Navy officers were arrested on
charges of bilking 7 million euros from the Navy using a "ghost
ship" that was sunk in 2013.
As many as 100 people are now under investigation in the
so-called Mafia Capitale probe, including former center-right
mayor Gianni Alemanno.
The six arrested Monday included Navy Lieutenant Mario
Leto, petty officers Sebastiano Distefano and Salvatore Mazzone,
and three members of a company that provided black-market petrol
to gasoline stations controlled by the mob.
The six allegedly defrauded the senior service of seven
million euros' worth of ship fuel that was supposedly delivered
to the Navy at its deposit at the Sicilian port of Augusta.
Investigators determined the 11 million litres of fuel oil
never was delivered and that a tanker vessel that supposedly
made the delivery, the Victory I, in fact had been sunk in the
Atlantic in September 2013.
Meanwhile mobsters also planned to set up a contraband fuel
oil scam to be based at the port of Fiumicino, investigators
said.
The magistrates decided to open a new line of inquiry after
crime boss Ernesto Diotallevi was recorded telling his sons
Leonardo and Mario on the telephone that "if we throw ourselves
into smuggling...you could go at it for two years like a...
bulldozer".
Officers from the Carabinieri paramilitary police's ROS
special anti-mafia unit said the phone taps showed that
Diotallevi senior, aged 70, wanted "to acquire a petrol pump to
install at the naval docks (at Fiumicino) with which to carry
out fraud on flows of fuel together with his sons Mario and
Leonardo and with the participation of Mario Gonelli (former
centre-right candidate to be mayor of Fiumicino) and (Finance
police sergeant) Giuseppe Volpe".
"The operation was aimed at re-selling fuel on the black
market," the ROS report said.
Also on Monday, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano announced
that Rome Prefect Giuseppe Pecoraro, the representative of the
central government responsible for law and order, has nominated
a three-member commission of inquiry into the mafia corruption
scandal.
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