Mafia
It doesn’t matter if these days they’re modern boardroom businessmen in Ermenegildo Zegna suits and Bally shoes. They’re still the Mafia, and they’ll still mug you.
This week the US Department of Justice and the FBI released a series of documents reminding us the Mafia – aka La Cosa Nostra, the Mob, or as insiders call it, “This Thing of Ours” – really are not such nice people, even if they know good meatball recipes and are nice to children.
The DoJ and the FBI announced indictments against 13 individuals, being a combination of mobsters, lawyers and accountants, most of who were arrested in coordinated raids on Wednesday morning. This particular scam allegedly worked like this:
Continue reading "Filthy murderous mobsters are no Goodfellas" »
They called it Tangentopoli. ‘Tangenti’ is one of the Italian words for ‘bribes’, and Tangentopoli summed up the idea that Italian politics had become a game of Monopoly fuelled by kickbacks.
I spent a lot of time in Italy in the 90s, starting with a story for ‘Foreign Correspondent’ in April 1993. Tangentopoli had convulsed the country, with magistrates uncovering vast swathes of corruption involving most of the leading political figures of the previous three decades.
My first encounter with the new reality came in a town in Abruzzo called Chieti. It was a sort of magnified microcosm of Italy, because almost every councillor on the local government had been arrested for corruption.
Continue reading "How Berlusconi blew Italy’s chance to come clean" »
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TCB 24 X7 says:
gillard should tee up with him then. They would make a good couple, the fiery red head and the hot italian sausage. . Read more »
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mary monica roche says:
Silvio Berlusconi behaves like a rich businessman and covers up corruption like a politician. Silvio Burlesconi would be an ideal prime minister for any conservative party or liberal party anywhere on earth. Read more »
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New York Mafia boss John Gotti was sentenced to life imprisonment today in 1992.
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