What happened to never going against the family?
Leaders in the Cosa Nostra, Sicily’s mafia, have reportedly voiced dissatisfaction over the quality of new recruits, following the arrest of nearly 150 individuals linked to the group.
“The standard has dropped; nowadays, they arrest someone and if he turns informant, they arrest another… pitiful low-level,” expressed former Cosa Nostra leader Giancarlo Romano in a wiretapped conversation prior to his death in a shootout, as reported by BBC News.
Romano also revealed that he was nostalgic for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic “The Godfather,” about a fictional mob family in New York.
“The recent arrests on Tuesday reveal that Cosa Nostra remains active and operating, utilizing new communication methods,” stated Maurizio de Lucia, the chief prosecutor in Palermo, Sicily’s capital. He highlighted the mafia’s use of encrypted applications to coordinate and collaborate, indicating a focus on business operations and efforts to reestablish its ranks.
Domenico La Padula, with the Italian Carabinieri police, told The New York Times this week that the Cosa Nostra “is far from dead.”
He said they have been able to survive by finding “new energy and new strength,” with new recruits and 21st-century criminal ventures like online gambling.
Palermo, Sicily’s capital. (Frank Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Cosa Nostra has remained “strongly tied to the rules of its founding fathers and its ancient rituals,” the Carabinieri told The Times, adding that their use of encrypted devices has “limited the need for traditional meetings and gatherings to the bare minimum.”
John Dickie, who wrote “Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse and Cosa Nostra, A History of the Sicilian Mafia,” told The Telegraph that Italian authorities have become “fantastic” at surveilling the mafia.
“Mafia dons have been caught boasting how good their anti-bugging devices were, at the same time that they were being bugged,” he revealed.
Dickie also agreed that the Cosa Nostra appears to be “in decline.”
“You only have to read the phone taps where the bosses are saying ‘it’s not like it used to be,’” he said. “This is about the fifth time that the bosses have tried to reorganise the cupola since the early 1990s. Every time they have been thwarted. The authorities were on to them.”
He continued, “These arrests mean that Cosa Nostra has another big task to rebuild, and they show that the state is still stronger than the mafia.”
