Mafia, the government holds Nordio back on changes to external competition. Relaunch on organized crime – Corriere.it

The government does not intend to follow the Minister of Justice in his forward flight on the remodulation of the external competition in mafia association. There is consolidated jurisprudence, I would not reopen other speeches, the undersecretary to the Prime Minister cuts short Alfredo Mantovano, one of the two magistrates (together with Nordio) enrolled in the Meloni executive. Rather, he suggests that there will be an intervention that it goes in the opposite direction to the dreaded lowering of the guard in the fight against organized crime; even a decree law to remedy the possible damage caused by a recent sentence of the Court of Cassation which questions the mafia origin of some crimes (including murders) when the crime of association is not contested. Although there is the aggravating circumstance to favor the Camorra, the ‘Ndrangheta or Cosa nostra.

The interview with Minister Nordio: Justice, we change. Here’s how to intervene on external competition

These are the problems determined by today’s jurisprudence that Mantovano refers to in order to divert attention from those of yesterday’s jurisprudence evoked by the Minister of Justice Nordio regarding external competition. What is more, it is not a crime envisaged by the penal code, therefore there is nothing to abolish or modify; it is a juridical construction imagined since the times of pool anti-mafia of Falcone and Borsellinobut even since the 1930s, as the Palermo prosecutor recalled yesterday Maurice DeLucia before the anti-mafia commission: It seems to me difficult not to resort to a tool that has proved to be useful and correct. If we want to imagine some reform, since it is an objectively delicate matter, we can take a cue from the well-established jurisprudence and transform it into a new norm, but on the side ofmafia associationin the sense of identifying further typified forms of conduct which would no longer be external competition but a real participation in the mafia association.

In any case, Mantovano suggests, the subject is not on the agenda. The fact that it took years to arrive at consolidated jurisprudence means that it can therefore be debated there is not a disavowal of Nordio. But better to do something else. Also to give the image of a government that intends to strengthen and not weaken the fight against the mafias. For example by intervening on another front opened not by the government or by Parliament, but by the judiciary itself. In September 2022, in fact, the first criminal section of the Court of Cassation issued a sentence in which the use of some interceptions arranged and carried out according to the less rigorous regime that applies to organized crime offenses was declared illegitimate: to arrange them, you do not need serious indications of a crime, as long as they are sufficient; and the authorization decrees can last up to 40 days instead of the 15 established for common crimes. According to the reasoning of the first section which accepted the defendants’ appeal on this point, in order to access the system envisaged for organized crime offenses it is necessary to contest an associative case, leaving out the other crimes for those committed using the conditions set out in thearticle 416 bisthat is, to favor mafia associations.

A legal reasoning which – as reported by many district prosecutors and by the national anti-mafia prosecutor itself – risks blowing up many ongoing trials prepared and celebrated according to previous interpretations. Questioning the concept of organized crime means creating a certain alarm throughout the system, Mantovano insists. Not only for wiretapping, but also for special aggravating circumstances, prison benefits, penalties and so on. In a nutshell, it means weakening the double track according to which it is easier to convict criminal offenses and more difficult (if not impossible) to have access to benefits. And while waiting for the joint sections of the Cassation to settle the question posed by the new verdict (as happened with the external competition), the government is studying the possibility of intervening urgently with a decree law. The first meetings between the technicians of the offices involved have already taken place. To give a definition of organized crime through a law, as forty years ago to define the mafia association, explained Mantovano in these meetings. And perhaps also to get out of the corner of confrontation-clash with theNational Association of Magistratesby a singular coincidence: in the college of five judges that issued the sentence that ended up in the government’s sights there was also (although not in the role of rapporteur) Joseph Santaluciathe president of the ANM who just a week ago argued directly with his former colleague who is now undersecretary at Palazzo Chigi, regarding judicial interference in politics.

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