The alarm about the phenomenon of the criminal economy, the evolution of mafia organizations and cryptocurrencies starts from Casal di Principe, a territory engaged in the front line in the fight against organized crime. An ambitious challenge launched by the Summer School Ucsi, the school of investigative journalism promoted by the Unione cattolica stampa italiana of Caserta and the public agency for legality Agrorinasce, in collaboration with the Order of Journalists Campania.
The fifth edition, entitled “Our Bisinissi – Criminal Economies / Gli Affari Nostri – Economie Criminali”, is scheduled from 13 to 15 September at Villa Liberazione (in via Angiolieri), formerly known as “Villa Scarface”, a property confiscated from the brother of the Casalesi clan leader, Walter Schiavone, currently managed by the ASL Caserta which has created a day centre for mental health.
The mafias, therefore, are increasingly transforming into economic crimes and, to understand the phenomenon even better, just look at the latest reports: the criminal economy is worth 30% of the official economy of the province of Caserta; the mafia economy in Italy is able to erode 15% of the GDP per capita; the leading "products" are drugs, the exploitation of prostitution and extortion, which bring in almost 20 billion euros every year (cigarette smuggling, usury and waste trafficking are also included in the budget). And not only that.
Organized crime records approximately 150 billion euros in revenues and, against just over 35 billion in costs, has profits of over 100 billion. Truly alarming numbers that even surpass those of some European energy giants.
Agrorinasce – Agency for innovation, development and security of the territory, is a consortium company with entirely public capital constituted by 6 Municipalities (Casal di Principe, Casapesenna, S. Cipriano d'Aversa, Villa Literno, S. Marcellino and S. Maria La Fossa) with the aim of strengthening legality in an area with a high crime density, which hosts 156 properties confiscated from the Camorra involved in recovery actions for social and public use, of which 141 are financed by the Ministry of the Interior, Fondazione con il Sud, Ministry for the SOUTH/CIPE, Campania Region, Presidency of the Council of Ministers (Department of Youth and Equal Opportunities), Ministry of the Environment, Agrorinasce (Member Municipalities and Social Cooperatives) and Vodafone Foundation.
“With the Summer School we go directly to the outskirts – explains director Luigi Ferraiuolo – as Pope Francis has often suggested. In the Casal di Principe area, in the last decade, we have understood the importance of journalism in the fight against organized crime but also for the rebirth of a community, inviting colleagues to come even to the scene of the crime”.
The seminars will also include a comparison between the two most important public bodies in Italy – the Consortiums “Agrorinasce” in Campania and “Sviluppo e legalità” in Sicily – the Campania Region and the National Agency for the Administration and Destination of Assets Confiscated from the Mafia.
"In such a context - says Giovanni Allucci, administrator of Agrorinasce - we thought it was important to offer journalists a stable moment of comparison and updating with investigators and magistrates. The theme that is closest to our hearts is the recovery and valorization of assets confiscated from the Camorra, not only for the symbolic signal in the fight against the mafia, but also for the social and economic implications".
The 2019 Summer School will go beyond national borders and will be able to count on the presence of many internationally renowned experts and journalists. Present in Casal di Principe, among others, the president of the Anti-Mafia Commission, Nicola Morra; the commander of the DIA, General Giuseppe Governale; the deputy prosecutor of the DDA Reggio Calabria, Gaetano Paci; the prosecutor of the Republic of Naples, Giovanni Melillo; the president of “Svimez”, Adriano Giannola; the head of the “Economics” editorial staff of the Corriere della Sera, Nicola Saldutti; General Umberto Rapetto, former commander of the Telematic Fraud Unit of the Guardia di Finanza, Privacy Authority of the Republic of San Marino; Senator Pietro Grasso, former national Anti-Mafia prosecutor; the director of the National Transplant Center, Massimo Cardillo; Senator Rosaria Capacchione; the eyewitness of the murder of Don Giuseppe Diana, Augusto Di Meo; MEP Franco Roberti, former national Anti-Mafia prosecutor; the mayor of Corleone Nicolò Nicolosi, president of the Consortium “Sviluppo e legalità”; the director of the National Agency for the Administration and Destination of Assets Seized and Confiscated from Organized Crime, the prefect Bruno Frattasi; the deputy prosecutor of the Naples DDA, Alessandro D'Alessio; Giacomo Di Gennaro, Federico II University of Naples, curator of the “Report on Crime in Large Italian Urban Areas”; the writer and journalist Sergio Nazzaro.
As in previous editions, 10 scholarships were awarded to young journalists, precarious or unemployed. The properties confiscated from the Camorra will be used for training, catering and hospitality activities.
The school – which also boasts the patronage of the Italian Federation of Catholic Weeklies (Fisc), the National Federation of the Italian Press (Fnsi), the National Order of Journalists, the Joint Union of Journalists of Campania (Sugc), the POLIS Foundation of the Campania Region, the Diocese of Aversa, Ucsi Campania, Assostampa Caserta and the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” – is free and is accredited for journalism training on the Sigef platform.
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