Cosentino gets 7 yrs for mafia extortion (3)

(ANSA) - Caserta, March 15 - Former economy undersecretary and ex-People of Freedom (PdL) coordinator Nicola Cosentino on Wednesday got seven and a half years in jail for extortion and illegal competition with mafia links. His brothers, Giovanni and Antonio, got nine and a half years and five years, four months respectively from the court in Santa Maria Capua Vetere near Naples. The case against former Caserta prefect and ex-PdL MP Maria Elena Stasi timed out. In November a court in Caserta near Naples sentenced Cosentino to nine years in prison and banned him from holding public office for life for colluding with the Neapolitan Camorra mafia.
    Cosentino - who was elected MP four times between 1996-2008 as a member of three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi's now-defunct PdL - was sentenced to four years in prison last June for corrupting a prison guard.
    The former MP was also involved in the so-called Eco4 trial on alleged Camorra infiltration into Caserta-area consortiums.
    He was arrested in April 2014 along with 12 others for alleged extortion and unfair competition in favor of his family petrol pump business in the southern Campania region.
    Also on his rap sheet is a March 2013 arrest on suspicion of collusion with the powerful Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan Camorra mafia, whose death threats have forced anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano into 24-hour police protection.