Italian mafia 'turns to wind farm investment to launder money and benefit from EU subsidies'

Winds farms, and renewable energy in general, are the most popular target

Report: Allows 'them to mix dirty money with legitimate economic activities'



The mafia is ramping up investment in wind farms to launder criminal earnings and benefit from generous EU subsidies, a report by Europe’s policing agency has warned.

Attracted by generous EU and state handouts, and coupled with lax controls, the Europol analysis found that Italian gangsters are increasingly seeing renewable energy as easy pickings.

‘The Italian mafia is investing more and more in renewable energy, especially in wind farms, to profit from generous European grants paid for by member states which allow them to mix dirty money with legitimate economic activities,’ the report said.

New horizons: Italian mafia have turned to wind farm investment to launder money and benefit from EU subsidies according to a Europol report

The scam works on multiple levels, using the age-old formula of intimidation of landowners and infiltration of regional agencies that hand out subsidies and award contracts, observers believe.

Last year police confiscated 350million euros (£295million) worth of assets from one of Europe’s largest wind farms in Crotone, southern Italy, after it was linked to the Calabrian N’drangheta mafia.

Seize: Earlier this year Italian police seized more than £1billion in assets from Vito Nicastri, 57, pictured, a Sicilian wind farm magnate because of his alleged Mafia links

In the south of Italy, where most of the wind farm development has taken place, it is thought that mafia clans had a stake in many of the companies involved.



Then, by infiltrating the public agencies that award wind farm contacts and distribute subsidies, they have been able to ensure they win the business.

Experts say the gangs strong-arm landowners into accepting wind farms, which destroy swathes of countryside, and threaten any construction firms that refused to pay extortion fees.



Tactics include using arson to destroy premises and expensive machinery followed up with threatening phone calls.

Some wind farms that were built by criminal groups have since been sold to genuine energy companies completely unconnected to the mafia. Others that were built with public money have never functioned.

John Dickie, professor of Italian studies at University College London and the author of a number of histories of the mafia, said it was impossible to estimate how much of their vast earnings is laundered through renewable energy schemes.

The mafia clans are ‘opportunists’ he said, which have dipped a toe in every sort of public works from health contracts in the 1990s to the construction of a container port in the 1970s.



Crackdown: Head of the anti-Mafia agency Arturo de Felice said the energy sector has been targeted by the Sicilian Mafia

£1BILLION 'LORD OF THE WIND'

A Sicilian green energy magnate – dubbed the Lord of the Wind because of his vast renewables investments – is under house arrest after allegedly helping the mafia to launder money. In April, Italian anti-mafia police confiscated more than £1billion in assets from Vito Nicastri, 57, above, in the biggest mafia-linked seizure in history. Investigators claimed that Nicastri, who has been ordered to remain in his home town of Alcamo on the west coast of Sicily for three years, had ‘high-level’ contacts in the mafia and invested money made from criminal activities. He is known to have links to Italy’s most-wanted godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro, who has been on the run since 1993.

He added: ‘They don’t care about the sector, they just think about the ability to rip people off in it.

‘They have been doing similar things since the 19th century, when the government contract was simply to build a bridge or a new road.’



Renewables allow the mafia clans to successfully reinvent themselves as ‘white collar’ organisations, he said.



‘One of their competitive advantages over lawful businesses is that at a time when credit is hard to come by they have access to a lot of cash that they desperately need to invest.’



Italy’s poor and crime-ridden south has attracted huge sums from the Structural Fund given out by the European Commission in Brussels, which had a budget of €350billion (£295billion) for the period 2007-2013.

Sicily’s volcanic landscape was once breathtaking – with rugged mountains and rich meadows sweeping down to the coasts.



But many of these idyllic scenes have been brutalised by the march of wind farms.



In recent years the mafia has extensively laundered money through hotel construction and the tourism industry.