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Sabrina Pignedoli, of the Five Star Movement, said crime bosses had capitalised on the EU’s expansion to Eastern Europe where they have invested vast sums of illicit cash in legitimate businesses. During periods of economic crisis, Italian mafia-style groups – the Cosa Nostra, Camorra and Ndrangheta – have maintained a low profile in their home country while investing billions of euros into struggling firms across the Continent. They use the legitimate business to launder cash from their large-scale drug trafficking, counterfeiting and toxic waste management enterprises.

Killings and violent crimes have been replaced with bribes and bungs as the organised criminals attempt to stay undetected, according to Ms Pignedoli. She told Express.co.uk: “It’s very difficult for other member states to understand what the Mafia really is. Newspapers outline the folkloristic elements, but that is only a very small part of the Mafia. “The violent part is the evident part, but there is an economic mafia that is very strong. And, it’s not only the Italians, but there are also Turkish, Albanian and Russian mafias operating in Europe. “The Italian Mafia is a very strong structure and very professional. For them, it’s more and more easier for them to pay or corrupt someone than to kill them.”

Italian MEP Sabrina Pignedoli has called for a EU-wide approach to fighting Mafia activities

A crackdown on crime bosses in Italy has seen them spread their illegal business across Europe

Ms Pignedoli is calling for Brussels to adopt a bloc-wide approach to tackling the Mafia’s presence in Europe. In Italy, specific laws have been introduced to tackle mobsters’ illicit and often violent activities after decades of crime syndicates profiting from lax rules. The legislation clearly defines the activities of crime families – illegal or legal – and allows for their assets to be seized and confiscated. It has allowed Italian authorities to target associates of organised crime gangs even if they have not broken the law themselves.

The murder of journalist Jan Kuciak brought to light Mafia activities in Slovakia

This crackdown has led to the Mafia searching out new businesses opportunities elsewhere in Europe, Ms Pignedoli said. She added: “The fact that there are no barriers in Europe it makes it easier for the Mafia circulate goods and money.” “The real problem is when they are money laundering they use banks, they use the legal economy, they buy restaurants and shopping malls – so they are invisible. “They’re giving money to the economy and helping the economy but this money is being laundered from the profits of drug trafficking.” MUST READ: War on Russian dirty cash fails as powers ‘not used’

The Ndrangheta crime family was siphoning off billions in EU agricultural subsidies

Ms Pignedoli said the Mafia’s presence is often undetected, or even a blind eye turned to it, because of the growth in the struggling economies that are targeted by crime bosses. The Ndrangheta, an Italian crime family from Calabria, was named in the investigation into the murder of Slovakian journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018. He and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, both 27, were found shot dead at close range at their home in the village of Vel’ka Macs outside the capital, Bratislava. His story unearthed a series of Italian businesses, with ties to the Ndrangheta, that had obtained access to hefty EU subsidies from the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy, amounting to around £58 million over a 14-year stretch between 2004 and 2018. The Ndrangheta crime gang also has ties to the UK, with corrupt allies in the City of London helping them to launder their cash, accounting for a surge in growth in the illicit industry that the National Crime Agency, in 2017, said was worth “hundreds of billions” of pounds a year. DON'T MISS

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