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Mafia mob get green thumbs |
| By: Agencies | | Date:
2010-09-06 | | Place: Sicily | |
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Italy's wind farms promising a clean, green future have acquired a dirtier whiff. They are the latest industry to be infiltrated by the country's mobsters.
Attracted by the prospect of generous grants to boost the use of alternative energies, the so-called eco Mafia has begun fraudulently creaming off millions of euros from the government.
Nowhere has the industry's reputation become more tarnished than Sicily, where turbines dot the horizon in such Mafia strongholds as Corleone, the setting for the Godfather films.
"Nothing earns more than a wind farm," said Edoardo Zanchini, an environmental campaigner who has investigated Mafia infiltration of the industry.
"Anything that creates wealth interests the Mafia."
Recent research by Kroll, an international corporate security firm, discovered examples across Europe of clean energy schemes being used to line criminals' pockets.
Some involve turbines that stand derelict or are never built, while others are used to launder profits from other crime enterprises. |
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