Rome Chief Prosector
Giuseppe Pignatone told the parliamentary anti-mafia commission
Thursday that more operations are in the works in his Rome mob
probe, which has led to dozens of arrests.
"More operations will follow shortly," he told MPs, adding
that the city has frozen a 25-million-euro public housing tender
offer "because it may have gone to firms owned by (jailed
suspect Salvatore) Buzzi".
A former manslaughter convict, Buzzi headed several
cooperatives implicated in the probe.
The syndicate does not have a rigid structure, Pignatone
said.
Ex rightwing terrorist and gangster Massimo Carminati is
the leader, Riccardo Brugia was in charge of what he called the
"military" aspects and Salvatore Buzzi managed the civil service
contacts, Pignatone explained.
The organization used mafia methods including "violence to
reach licit and illicit goals, and intimidation of its
interlocutors," the prosecutor said.
The Rome mob cut across party lines, he added. For example,
"Carminati comes from the extreme right, Buzzi from the opposite
extreme. Asked how he can bear to associate with the likes of
Carminati, Buzzi replied 'politics is one thing, business is
another'," Pignatone said.
The prosector went on to say that the mob is not Rome's
only problem. "It may not even be the main problem," Pignatone
said.
"Rome is not being controlled by one single mafia
organization... it's too big for that".
However, the mob he has uncovered in his two-year
investigation "is original and native" to the city.
"In Rome a series of mafia investments have been made, and
there are also mafia-type organizations in the surrounding
territory," Pignatone said.
"But today we took a step forward. There is no connection to
the classic mafia... (the Rome mob) mirrors Roman society in
some way".
Pignatone's hearing came after Carabinieri earlier on
Thursday arrested two more people as part of his massive probe.
Rocco Rotolo and Salvatore Ruggiero were nabbed on charges
of mafia association and are suspected of linking cooperatives
controlled by Roman mobsters with the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta
syndicate.
Ruggiero, whom investigators say has ties with the Mancuso
clan of the Calabrian mob, has been employed since 2009 in a
company called Roma Multiservizi SpA, which is partially owned
by the city of Rome.
Its president since 2013 was Franco Panzironi, who has been
arrested on charges of mafia association, corruption and
bid-rigging.
Panzironi is thought to be the right-hand man of Massimo
Carminati, the alleged leader of the Rome mob who is now also
behind bars.
As well, investigators said Panzironi was an employee in
1998-1999 of the June 29 Cooperative led by fellow jailed
suspect Salvatore Buzzi, a former manslaughter convict who was
wiretapped apparently boasting about his ill-gotten gains.
"Do you have any idea how much I make on these immigrants?"
Buzzi allegedly said in a wiretap from early 2013 contained in
prosecution documents.
"Drug trafficking is not as profitable".
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