Italian officials say organized crime leaders in Italy are shifting their focus from violence and intimidation to seeking control of the economy.
The head of the Italy's parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, Giuseppe Pisanu stated the Mafia hopes to use its ability to corrupt politics as a channel for laundering illegal wealth into the legal economy. "We know how it accumulates this wealth but we know very little about where it goes and how it is invested, and there is no doubt that this dirty capital enters the legal economy through the complicity and collaboration of important players in civil society — lawyers, notaries, businessmen, bankers, government officials and politicians on every level."
The anti-mafia laws in Italy must be strengthened, Pisanu said, as Italy seizes organized-crime assets, Mafia members react by "shifting their investments abroad or into the stock market and finance where it is difficult to track them down."
Source UPI
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