Italian anti-mafia mayor arrested for mafia links

Italian police on Tuesday arrested a former mayor for alleged ties to the mafia and seized assets worth 160 million euros (217 million U.S. dollars) from another person related to organized crime. From 2008 to 2013, Carolina Girasole was the center-left mayor of Isola Capo Rizzuto, a town in the southern Calabria region. Girasole was well-known throughout Italy as an "anti-mafia" symbol, local media said. Her apparent stance against organized crime led her to take part in several anti-mafia demonstrations alongside other women mayors from Italy's southern regions. But according to prosecutors, she had ties instead to 'Ndrangheta, Italy's most powerful mafia, which reaches throughout Italy and abroad. Police said Girasole had asked and accepted the votes of the Arena mafia clan, which is believed to be one of the strongest 'Ndrangheta gangs, in the 2008 mayoral vote. In return, she had guaranteed a wide range of favors to the clan, whose head, 76-year-old Nicola Arena, is already in jail for crimes linked to 'Ndrangheta. A dozen of people were involved in the case, and seven of them were detained by police. Also on Tuesday, police in the western island of Sicily seized assets worth 160 million euros from bank accounts to luxury goods belonging to two businessmen linked to a mafia gang near the city of Palermo. One of the suspects was reported to already have a large police record ranging from corrupting officials to extorting money. According to a recent study of Catholic University in Milan, Italy's four mafias, namely Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Neapolitan Camorra and Puglia's Sacra Corona Unita, have an annual turnover of 10.6 billion euros, or around 0.7 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). The four mafias invest their money in several main sectors, from trade and real estate to hotels, leasing, information technologies (IT) and farming, according to the study.