Anti-mafia cops tell Italian MPs of Malta base for fugitives

Malta’s proximity to Sicily and its ease of setting up companies, has established it as an outpost for mafia-related remote gaming business and a base for fugitives. 

Accounts of the solid ties between Malta’s white-collar industries and drug operations, with the mafia in Sicily and the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria, are now a regular feature of the biannual report of Italy’s anti-mafia unit DIA (Direzione Investigattiva Antifmia) to the Italian parliament. 

Malta has now been a constant fixture in the DIA’s parliamentary reports since 2017, following press reports about mafia-linked associates setting up Malta-based remote gambling companies and other arrests. The island’s geographical proximity to the Italian peninsula, with the possibility of avoiding customs controls, has in recent years favoured the “migration” of organised crime of the various Italian mafia clans. 

In its latest report, the DIA says Malta’s particularly favourable tax regime, and ease-of-business regulations, “allows the various clans to carry out profitable money laundering activities.” 

Various examples are presented of typically internationalised financial crime using Maltese companies, together with other companies in Cyprus or the British Virgin Islands, to avoid paying millions in customs duties on smuggled fuels and lubricants. 

But it is in the betting industry that main components of the southern Italian crime group known as the ‘Ndrangheta, have largely taken root, together with the Santapaola-Ercolano mafia clan of Catania. 

“In March 2021, a police operation revealed subjects who, in order to promote the interests of the Santapaola-Ercolano family, had created on the internet a special gaming platform, not authorised to operate in Italy, attributing its ownership to a Maltese company. Some police operations, concluded over the last few years, testify that crime from Puglia, like the other mafia operations, is interested in the illicit gaming market, with proceeds allowing the acquisition of corporate shareholdings, financial assets, vehicles, boats, luxury accessories and real estate. As happened in the past, the Maltese territory could continue to be exploited by clans mainly linked to the mafia for its fugitives.” 

Another clan identified with interests in the Maltese islands is Bari’s Parisi clan, said to be linked to complex tax frauds and money laundering, apart from oil smuggling, extortion, drugs trafficking and gun-running. “In Italy, the Parisi clan are well placed within the business, economic and social context, particularly in animal slaughter and meat processing industries through the control of cooperatives and private companies, and in catering.” 

Italian anti-mafia police believe the Parisi clan has generated at least €170 million in tax fraud using fictitious VAT credits claimed on inexistent financial transactions. 

In Catania, the Cappello-Bonaccorsi, and Laudani clans, are said to control the international drug trafficking route from the ‘Ndrangheta hotbed of Rosarno, just outside the Goia Tauro port, to Malta. “This trans-national organisation planned to import cocaine from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Spain, and was able to supply it to the most important local dealerships and Malta. The Rosarno-Catania connection highlights the ties between the Rosarnesi and the Cappello clan of Catania, whose historical origins mean business between the two groups has been going on for several years.” 

Furthering the Malta connection are links between both the Cappello-Bonaccorsi clan and the Santapoala-Ercolana family, on a large drug trafficking route from Albania to the Netherlands, as well Calabria and Puglia in southern Italy. “The investigation allowed us to outline the role played by some prominent figures of different mafia families within the Etna region’s criminal scenario... Once again the centrality of the business leads to often rival criminal organisations choosing to coexist on the same territory, renouncing violence and bloody conflicts in favour of business.” 

In December 2021, Catanese police arrested 16 persons engaged in cocaine and cannabis trafficking from Sicily to Malta, together with Albanian and Maltese subjects. “The narcotics departed from Albania and transited from Puglia and reached Ispica, which hosts an operational base of the organisation, and then passed on from Calabria for resale to Malta, Lombardy, and also on the Sicilian market, specifically the provinces of Syracuse and Ragusa.” 

Specifically, the Italian DIA believes much of this trafficking to Malta is coordinated by the Mazzaferro ‘ndrina. “The aforementioned operation reaffirms the highly favourable contiguity between the island of Malta and Sicily for illicit trafficking, as is also apparent from the ‘Alter Ego’ drug operation of November 2021 which outlined the role of prominent figures of the Santapaola and Cappello families, highlighting the reports, contacts and dynamics on the trafficking of large quantities of drugs and their supply, for subsequent sale to Maltese collectors.” 

Santapaola-Ercolano clan 

The Santapaola-Ercolano clan of Catania has been mentioned regularly in the DIA reports since 2017 for their Malta connections and is now believed to use the island as a base for its fugitives. 

In 2021, Operation ‘Doppio Gioco’ led to the seizure of €80 million in assets from an online sports betting operation which had branches in Malta, Germany, Poland and Italy. The Maltese company connected to the Santapaola-Ercolano clan was alleged to have facilitated the evasion of some €30 million in taxes. 

“Through its criminal associates, it organised the illegal collection of bets through a network of data centres – only a minimal part of the bets were placed online; the majority were actually cash bets. A total of €32 million in bets were then charged to the Maltese company, allowing massive tax evasion in Italy.” 

The Italian finance police said the Maltese companies laundered over €62 million through acquisition of land and buildings. 

The crime group used one of their associates, living in Sliema, as a director for various companies and gaming websites, who would smuggle hard cash from Sicily by car from other mafia associates travelling aboard the Virtu Ferries boat crossing. 

Wire-tapped and tracked assiduously by Italian investigators as they drove around Sliema, St Julian’s and Valletta, the recordings reveal an intimate knowledge of Maltese business: “We’ve reached the peak now here... It’s no longer the Malta we once knew,” says one woman identified as Ilda, a resident of Malta, to a mafia associate. 

Previous links between the Santapaola-Ercolano clan were evident in Operation ‘Dirty Oil’, the €30 million oil smuggling ring that saw the arrests of Maltese nationals Darren Debono and Gordon Debono: Italian associate Nicola Orazio Romeo – whose lawyer previously wrote to MaltaToday insisting his client is not a mafia associate – was described by prosecutors as someone employed “to further the business interests of the Santapaola-Ercolano family”. 

Another investigation, Operation ‘Gaming Offline’, includes Romeo in its list of accused, and dealt with a conspiracy on money laundering that used Malta as one of the bases for a gaming company, again on behalf of Santapaola-Ercolano family.