Lthe logistics base for all decisions was in the upper part of the Sanità district in Naples, the area nicknamed Miracoli, a maze of alleys that become increasingly narrow until they become impassable. But bosses and affiliates of the Mauro clan knew it well, and when they left that labyrinth, they did it to deal drugs, to ask for 'pizzo' and to impose extortion on the merchants of the lower part of the neighborhood that was divided between several clans and that for years, as the investigating judge of the Naples court, Luca Battinieri, writes, "was a powder keg ready to explode". Nineteen arrests, and twenty other suspects at large for an investigation that crushes the clan that more than any other has made "a whirlwind of alliances in three years from the end of 2013 to today for the management of the Health Service - writes the magistrate who signed the order - years of continuous ferments that alternate in a cyclical manner ephemeral agreements with deadly armed oppositions". The Mauros were previously allies of the Lo Russos and the Esposito-Genidonis. Then the Sequinos, then opposed to them and in agreement with the Vastarellas. All this has caused enormous instability and the many 'stese', the intimidating raids with shots in the air. Many of the arrests made today are linked precisely to charges of this crime. In the house of Ciro Mauro, the undisputed boss of the clan, a bug had been placed, because that was where decisions were made and that's where the victims of extortion were brought. "You said after Christmas and Christmas has passed. I'm already giving you a discount and now you have to bring the 1.500 euros", said the clan leader to a merchant who was never identified but who then gave in. The gang also intimidated for revenge, like when in May 2016 two people set fire to a Vergini bar to intimidate two employees, the wife and son of a member of the Sequino clan.
The Mauro clan extorted money from merchants and small business owners in the Rione Sanità, even though the company was in difficulty: the circumstance emerges from the order. In a wiretap in the records, captured in the home of the boss Ciro Mauro, some of the recipients of the precautionary measures (Salvatore Marfé, Biagio D'Alterio and the boss Ciro Mauro) try, without success, to impose the "pizzo" on the owner of a company: "We went to Sasà ... the company ... which is not working, however we told him that we do not want to know anything and not to go upstairs to Ciruzz like he did the other time because then we'll do tarantellas". With respect to an entrepreneur who dealt with intermediation in the furniture sector, originally from Rione Sanità, where he also lived, the request for protection money was around a few tens of thousands of euros. The fate of those who were reticent, however, was not rosy: one of the victims, in fact, was hit with a helmet after being caught in the street at dawn. The initial request made by the clan was for 20 thousand euros and the man was forced by two henchmen to go to the boss (“you have to come upstairs, Uncle Ciro wants you,” they told him). At the clan leader’s house the man was told: “thank me (Carlo Fiorito, one of those arrested) that you are still alive and not dead, you have to bring us 20 thousand euros, then, after delivery I will explain the reason for that request… do not ask anyone for help because no one can help you”. The amount was then halved and the man paid only a thousand, as a deposit, with the promise to pay the remaining 9 thousand within a few days. The Carabinieri also documented numerous “stese” (intimidating raids with gunshots fired wildly in the street) that characterized the moments of greatest tension with the other clans in the area with whom the relationships were fluctuating (Sequino, Vastarelle, Savarese, Esposito-Genidoni). In essence, however, in the last period it was precisely the Mauro clan that managed the illicit business (among which also figures the dealing of narcotics) in the Rione Sanità, given that the Vastarella clan was defeated by the police and the judiciary in 2018, while the Sequino clan, between 2018-2019.
Article published on November 27, 2019 - 06:36
