The unlikely solution to youths leaving Malta: criminal assets

Malta’s Asset Recovery Bureau currently holds over €51 million in criminal assets, a large chunk of which are seized cars and properties.

The proceeds from the sale of these assets are reinvested back into society, but what if those assets were re-used by giving them to local community groups?

In Italy, the social re-use of criminal assets is proving a unique tool to promoting solidarity and combatting organised crime. Chiara di Gaetano, an activist with Italian NGO Libera, says that re-using such assets has benefits across the board.

“When you seize or confiscate an asset, and then manage it through social re-use, you’re preventing organised crime from continuing their work in the area,” she said.

Apart from stopping organised crime groups in their tracks, the social re-use of assets can also be a powerful signal to criminals and citizens alike. “It signals to society that something new is happening there.”

Di Gaetano explained that there must be a social element to asset re-use, meaning assets cannot be given to any for-profit enterprise.

“They have to be social enterprises or cooperatives for it to be recognised as social reuse,” she said. “Social enterprises are enterprises for profit, but they must have a component of, say, hiring vulnerable demographics, or providing services to vulnerable areas.”

A key demographic that is benefiting from social re-use are youths. Social enterprises help create jobs in areas where organised crime has been endemic for years, allowing young people to feel like they have a future in their hometown.

“When you consider that over a million youth are migrating from the south of Italy every year in search of better working and living conditions; the fact that there are enterprises creating jobs with a social purpose […] this creates a possibility for youth to remain in their home area and avoids empty territories.”

She added that young people leaving their hometowns helps organized crime remain there. “The fact that so many youths are leaving Italy is a problem that needs to be addressed. It comes down to the fact that young people don’t feel like they have a future in the place they are born.”

How can criminal assets be reused socially?

In August 2022, Libera hosted a summer camp for 25 girls and boys from all over Italy. They met with families of mafia victims, enjoyed artistic workshops, and watched films.

It all happened a property in Pietralunga that was confiscated from the ‘Ndrangheta. The area, a hundred hectares of land in the Col della Pila aream had been recently assigned for social reuse to the Paneolio di Arci.

Meanwhile, a farmhouse in Piemonte is being used as a meeting place and has hosted plenty of summer camps. The farmhouse, Cascina Arzilla, was one of the first assets to be confiscated in northern Italy, but since 2004 it has been assigned for social reuse, with strong links to environmental and human exploitation.

It is also dedicated to Rita Atria and Antonio Landieri, two young mafia victims. Atria was born into a mafia family but committed suicide at the age of 17 after magistrate Paolo Borsellino, who was like a father figure to her, was killed by a car bomb in Palermo. Antonio Landieri died with two bullets in his back in 2004 after being mistaken for a drug dealer. He was unable to escape due to his disabilities, making him the first person with a disability to be killed by the mafia.

Naming and dedicating confiscated assets to innocent mafia victims is common in Italy. Di Gaetano says it’s a message of solidarity with the families of the victims. “It’s not a reparation in and of itself, but at a community and societal level, it’s a way to stand with the people directly affected by organized crime.”

Apart from providing communities with needed resources, the social re-use of criminal assets also allows communities to talk openly about organized crime and its prevalence at local, national, and transnational levels.

“There is this struggle that I see when it comes to talking about the presence of organized crimes in society. Organised crime is an endemic problem, it’s not just a foreign concept imported by migrant communities. It’s something that’s made possible because the situation in your country enables it to prosper and grow and profit.”

But the social re-use of assets can be a powerful tool to move past the dismissive attitude towards the presence of organized crime in countries. “It opens the floor to public recognition that, not only is mafia here, creating problems and damaging society, but the anti-mafia is also there, with citizens and institutions actively present. It opens the wound, in a sense, and from there, a lot of things can happen.”