Anti-Mafia

Mafia prevention measures in Italy

A dutiful premise is required for this sensitive topic. Magistrates who have dedicated their lives to fighting organized crime have always had a strong awareness of the 'insurmountable limits of judicial responses to the mafia'. As Paolo Borsellino explained in no uncertain terms, simply ascertaining crimes and identifying perpetrators is in itself not enough to eradicate the socio-economic and cultural roots of the mafia. They are so deeply interwoven in the reality of the country that they always find the strength to recover, with marked ferocity, after every judicial success.

Knowledge of the phenomenon

Over the years, criminal organizations have tended to entertain an extremely wide and diverse series of apparently legitimate relationships with the most varied external environments. With economic globalization, the mafia must be understood as a real 'enterprise of organized crime'.
Balance of law in Palermo

'Follow the money'

The technical result of this cultural background has been a fundamental process to modernize Italian criminal law, which has been applied as a shared focus on the mafia's assets through prevention measures ('follow the money', as Falcone said). More specifically, the legislation focuses on a particular form of white-collar crime close to mafia-influenced contexts. This leads to a gray area that cannot always be easily categorized as 'classical' criminal law, but which still carries a strong economic and political impact, endangering the concrete operation of free market rules and legal institutions in vast areas of the country.

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