International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 94
Criminal Networks: The Forgotten Actors of International Politics
holds the port of Rotterdam, where 36 tons or 30% of all the cocaine from Colombia
arrives in Europe (Reski 2013). Moreover, in his last investigation, Roberto
Saviano reports an incredible criminal lesson where the old European crime aristocracy
transmitting its key rules of the Mafia codes to a new crime bourgeoisie.
In fact, extracts from an interview conducted by Roberto Saviano with an NYPD
police detective which obtained phone tappings of a Ndrine’ santa addressing a
lesson during an assembly in New York of high-level members of Mexican cartels,
Italians, American-Italians, Albanese Mafias, and former Kaibiles soldiers.
who rules just does it and that’s all ... you don’t have the luxury to
believe in a happy, fair and moralistic world ... earn respect and
be the one commanding, as no one can mess with us .... Men of
Honour don’t follow rules, they follow a code of honour. This code
doesn’t tell you to be just or good but how to govern. Respect the
ones useful to you, do not trust family’s outsiders, kill only if necessary.
Lives pass, men have vices and don’t change, rules stay, that’s
why the code is everything. (Saviano 2014)
Furthermore, since the 1970s, notorious Mafias have adopted managerial
behaviors and rules in their functioning. They structured their organization as
a multinational with a political, security, financial, judiciary, and illicit trafficking
departments (Grennan and Britz 2006). Similarly, traditional Mafias’ Board
of Directors, Coupola and Commission, now coordinate investments worldwide.
During an interview, repentant Luigi Bonaventura explained that the Ndrangheta
functions like a rational multinational: “They have set up dozens of locali in
Germany. They have money in Switzerland, in the Netherlands and Belgium, they
control the ports. On the Côte d’Azur, they have villas; they are investing in the
tourism sector in Bulgaria; in the Balkans, they control the drug routes” (Tizian
and Tonnaci 2012).
Finally, in parallel to the development of consulting firms in the legal economy
since the 1970s, Mafias have adapted to the multiplication of trade routes,
technological innovations, norms, and criminal challengers, by incorporating a
new position in their structure: Brokers. These occult stage directors connect the
dots, they orchestrate immense and various illicit trafficking, they estimate the
costs and choose the routes, decide the modes of transports, and hire the necessary
and reliable workforce (Saviano 2014). A pioneering broker is Roberto “Bébé”
Pannunzi. Never affiliated to one Mafia, nor initiated, he was on excellent terms
with Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra but also Colombian cartels (Bargent 2013).
Able to provide Mafias with Boeings and submarines, vetting every step of the
trafficking (shipping, landing, stocking, etc.), using elaborated codes and a worldwide
network of corrupted agents (among whom Brindisi’s deputy attorney), his
name alone was a byword for any shipment of high-quality cocaine to arrive at the
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