by Marzia De Giuli
ROME, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A major probe carried out in Rome has bust a huge mafia-style organization which prosecutors said was the evidence of solid connections between the criminal world and the political scene in the Italian capital.
"I refuse to validate the idea that Rome is a city of mafia affiliates. Most citizens are respectable people," Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino told Rai State television on Sunday, days after numerous politicians, officials and entrepreneurs were suspected to be involved in the ring.
Former Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno of rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party and Rome house councillor Daniele Ozzimo of Democratic Party (PD), the center-left party of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, were among the more than 100 people put under investigation.
The reference man in Rome's center-left municipality for the national anti-corruption authority, Italo Walter Politano, was also allegedly involved and removed from his post.
Earlier this week, Renzi reseted to zero the PD roles in Rome and put the party's national president Matteo Orfini in charge of the branch. In an interview with La7 television, the prime minister called himself "shocked" by what prosecutors called a "pronged corruptive system" which had no ties with southern mafia organizations but used the same intimidation techniques.
The "Rome Mafia," as prosecutors named the organization, "was structured like a holding with several sectors of interest" and led by a noted former member of a neo-fascist terrorist group, Massimo Carminati. Construction industry, food service, garbage collection, maintenance of public green areas and migrant facilities were among the organization's profitable businesses.
"Do you have an idea of how much money I make on migrants? Drug trafficking is not that profitable," Carminati's right-hand man said, according to a wiretap from last year cited by local media. "We closed this year with turnover of 40 million euros (49 million U.S. dollars), but all of these profits came from the gypsies, the housing emergency and the migrants," he added.
Police arrested 37 people charged with crimes including extortion, usury, bribery, bid rigging, false invoicing and laundering, and seized assets worth more than 200 million euros (246 million U.S. dollars).
"Mafia-style organizations exist because they do have relations with politics," the head of the Italian parliament's anti-mafia commission Rosy Bindi commented. "Inasmuch politics and mafia have connections, Italy will never get rid of mafia which threatens citizens and batters the economy," she stressed.
The Five-Star Movement (M5S), a grass-roots formation which gained more than 25 percent of the national vote in last year's political election, asked that the Rome town council be dissolved for mafia infiltrations as happened for several towns of Italy in the last years.
"Rome, a city that I love very much, risks to be associated with the word 'mafia'," Alessandro Di Battista, an influential M5S member, said. "We are fed up with seeing our capital like this," he added, referring to the many recent operations which have highlighted how mafia-style organizations have become vehicles for power, wealth and territorial control in Rome.
