Social reuse of assets confiscated from the mafia, the State must win the bet

On March 7 thirty years ago, the launch of a law marked a civilizational bet in the fight against the mafia: transforming the illicitly accumulated wealth of the clans into an opportunity for collective redemption. This path was born from an extraordinary civil mobilization promoted by the association Libera, which gathered one million signatures in support of what would become Law 109 of 1996.

Thirty years of application, from North to South Italy, compel a reflection not only on the symbolic value of Law 109, but also on the assessment of what has been done so far, amidst lights and shadows.

I have always been convinced that it is on the social reuse of confiscated assets that the credibility of the State in the fight against the bosses is at stake: because taking away their illicit wealth and assigning it to the community, preventing abandonment, is an achievement that strikes the mafiosi even on the reputation level. However, there are operational limits in the application of the law that need to be addressed, starting with management, which must be closer to the territories.

Sicily alone has 40% of the confiscated assets in the entire country, yet it experiences the paradox of a disjointed structure in relation to its territory, with a structure of the national agency for confiscated assets based in Palermo and one in Reggio Calabria managing over half of the confiscated assets in Sicily. This fragmentation of competencies stifles productive realities and does not offer a unified vision of asset management in Sicily. Furthermore, there is no digital platform that transparently identifies the assets to be assigned. To this, we add increasingly long delays between the seizure phase and the final confiscation phase during which the assets are left to degradation, which instead of being a symbol of redemption represent a defeat for everyone.

Following the lesson of Pio La Torre, it is necessary to know the territory and have a political authority that takes responsibility for management, and this cannot be the national agency for confiscated assets. The involvement of municipalities and prefectures that are familiar with the assets is essential; otherwise, these risk being lost among bureaucratic paperwork. As for companies, new skills are needed, more specific ones that allow overcoming the “eternal” management of administrators and the bureaucratic bottlenecks that ultimately discourage workers. We cannot afford opacity and controversies in management, especially now that the civil tension against the mafia has decreased, in the mistaken general belief that not shooting as before makes it less harmful and pervasive.

As president of the regional Anti-Mafia commission, I wanted to see firsthand the places and associations that deal with the management of various realities taken from the mafias, and I chose to include, in every session traveling through the Sicilian provinces, discussions with the mayors of the municipalities, the first sentinels of what happens in our cities. From that listening experience, some concrete measures were born, such as the inclusion in the latest Financial Law of the provision that allows extending support for redevelopment to consortia assigned confiscated assets. Or again, the regulation that provides access to credit through Irfis for confiscated companies that were previously automatically placed by credit institutions on the “Black lists”, marking their inevitable failure, with percentages exceeding 95% of companies.

In what I consider “The Anti-Mafia of Doing”, which does not limit itself to denouncing problems but seeks solutions, there is also the work we have done to revitalize the social outskirts of our cities, with a provision that will allow municipalities to establish a special office capable of coordinating interventions that are currently distinct among various departments, thus making the action against social distress more effective. We must be aware that the fight against the mafia is a watershed for the type of land we want to live in. For this reason, it is particularly important to transform an asset taken from the clans into an added value for our communities.

Antonello Cracolici is president of the Regional Anti-Mafia Commission