Police in Sicily have arrested 94 people, including alleged mafia members, in dawn raids, following large-scale EU agricultural subsidies fraud.

The raids have been described as one of the largest operations focused on the Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra.

Prosecutors claimed Sicilian mobsters had fraudulently received more than €10m in agricultural aid since 2010, including funds for thousands of hectares of “ghost” farmland in the east of the island – land that was either non-existent or owned by the Italian state or regional government.

Two Mafia clans, the Batanesi and Bontempo Scavo families, are believed to be at the centre of the alleged fraud, according to investigators. The two had been in conflict with each other for years but recently decided to end their turf wars and instead team up in their illicit activities.

Among those arrested in the raids by 600 members of Italy’s paramilitary carabinieri and financial police officers were the heads of the two clans, a number of public officials who help farmers apply for EU aid, a local mayor and an accountant. As part of the investigation 150 companies were also seized.

“The boss just needed to call over the phone a farmer to steal his land. Often, feared by the mere name of the mobster, the farmer gave up his land without even trying to rebel, for fear of retaliation,” Sergio Mastroeni, a magistrate, wrote in the investigation file.

Mastroeni said the clans had obtained the funds thanks to the help of “white-collar workers” who had enabled them to negotiate the bureaucratic world of EU funding. In the interceptions rental rights and ownership of vast tracts of land in the Nebrodi Regional Park, a hilly region popular for grazing, were falsely declared. Participants also allegedly staged hundreds of fraudulent operations against AGEA, the Italian agency which issues agricultural funding.

Intercepting EU agricultural funding has become a growing business for the Sicilian mafia in recent years.

Weakened under judicial pressure and with drug trafficking now run by the most powerful Calabrian mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, the declining Cosa Nostra has been pushed back to its rural origins.

Far from Palermo, hidden in the Sicilian interior, the “cattle mafia’’ or the “rural Cosa Nostra’’ is attempting to make a comeback in the countryside, where annual EU agricultural subsidies of up to €1,000 a hectare provide an incentive to criminal groups.

Some farmers who refused to be involved with the fraudulent practices reported the threats of Cosa Nostra. Mobsters began forcing farmers to sell hundreds of hectares. If they refused, the mafiosi would spoil their land, kill their livestock or burn their homes.

“They want to take our lands,” said Emanuele Feltri, who in 2010 set up an organic farm in the Simeto valley that was the target of fire and theft by mafiosi. “Their goal is to bring the farmer to bankruptcy by destroying his crop or burning his lands. In that way they will be able to buy the land for very little money and benefit from EU agricultural subsidies.”



