Italy fears mobsters ready to profit from quake

ROME — Even before all the debris from Italy's latest devastating earthquake is cleaned up, investigators fear that organized crime is poised to profit from contracts worth billions of dollars to rebuild schools, hospitals, courthouses and homes.

The crime clans have many connections to cement companies, debris-removal outfits and other businesses which could infiltrate the reconstruction process if authorities aren't vigilant, warned Franco Roberti, head of the Naples office of investigative magistrates who probe the Camorra crime syndicate based in that southern port city.

"We learned just how involved the Camorra is in this (construction work) by investigating the aftermath of the 1980 quake" near Naples, said Roberti in a telephone interview.

L'Aquila, the largest town in the central Apeninne Abruzzo region which was rocked by the 6.3-magnitude quake on April 6, is some 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Naples, and lies outside the southern home turf of Italy's major crime syndicates.

But investigators say Italy's mobsters are increasingly breaking out of traditional geographic boundaries, as they expand into the more affluent central and northern regions in search of ways to launder and invest hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from drug trafficking, extortion and other rackets.

"Keep the vigilance high against mafias in construction sites," the national Catholic daily L'Avvenire headlined Sunday, worried that mobsters will enrich themselves from some of the euro12 billion (more than $16 billion) in reconstruction money some government estimates say will be needed.

"Cosa Nostra, 'ndrangheta and Camorra have already arrived in Abruzzo and certainly will have their eyes on the reconstruction," Giuseppe Pisanu, a former interior minister who now heads Parliament's anti-mafia commission, has warned.

Pisanu was referring to Italy's three main crime syndicates as he said mobsters have learned to move in political circles throughout Italy as well as enter public administration.

Getting a slice of public works contracts in the underdeveloped south, where the central government has poured billions of dollars over the last decades, has long been a major source of revenue for organized crime, particularly Sicily's Cosa Nostra and the Camorra.

The Casalesi crime clan, a ruthless branch of the Camorra based near Caserta, is considered to be particularly well-positioned to try to get a sizable piece of the reconstruction action.