Legami Law Firm: since 1972

Legislation anti-mafia wealth tax

The magistrates who have dedicated their lives to fighting organized crime have always been acutely aware of the "insurmountable limits of the judicial response to the Mafia." Paolo Borsellino explained bluntly that simply investigating crimes and identifying the culprits is in itself inadequate to eradicate the Mafia's socioeconomic and cultural roots, which are so deeply embedded in the country's reality that they find the strength to rebound, with ever greater ferocity, after every judicial success against it.

Over the years, a clear tendency has been observed among mafia organizations to maintain an extremely broad and diverse set of relationships, characterized by apparently legitimate characteristics, with a wide variety of external environments; this is a consequence of the "mafia-owned enterprise" model, which is increasingly widespread in the context of economic globalization.

The technical outcome of this cultural background has been a fundamental process of modernization of Italian criminal law, which has resulted in a shared focus on mafia capital (follow the money, as Falcone said) through preventive measures. The legislation seeks to target that particular form of white-collar crime known as mafia proximity. This creates a gray area that is not always easily classified within the categories of "classic" criminal law, but nonetheless characterized by a strong economic and political impact, enough to jeopardize the effective functioning of free market rules and the institutions of the rule of law across vast swathes of the country.