SISAL anti-crime

“The Camorra delivers groceries door to door, lends money with suspended usury. Criminal organisations leverage on hunger, they are investing to build consensus. The instinctive distrust of institutions increases trust in criminal organisations. The restart is in danger of being a mafia restart’ (quoted by Roberto Saviano)

The system proposed intends to be based on the functioning of existing networks and structures, and aims to create synergies and cooperation in the fight against organised crime; pooling the knowledge and means of organisations that can contribute in different and complementary ways.
According to a widely shared opinion, in the global economic crisis that will follow the Covid-19 pandemic, criminal organisations will act on three main directives:

• Directly intercepting the windfall funding that will be provided by nation states, EU funds and other international sources, through companies directly dependent on criminal capital.
• Taking advantage of the foreseeable inefficiencies of state’s red tape and the delays in the provision of aid to families, small and medium-sized enterprises, they will put themselves forward as the only organisational structure capable of dealing with the economic emergency.
• Regaining all the positions lost in institutions, in civil society, in the territories, in the relations with politicians and companies, over the past years, thanks to the enormous amount of liquidity at their disposal to be laundered.

The action of organised crime will take place against a backdrop of

• structural economic and productive weakness (over 15 years of no economic growth);
• political instability.

A reaction from civil society is necessary; a system of solidarity that can immediately intervene calling for solidarity against the onslaught of organised crime. Therefore, it is a necessary civil initiative.

The stakes are very high: the future of social, political and economic democracy in Europe necessarily passes through the conscious fight against mafia, which will try in every way to ‘grab’ the huge anti-crisis financial flow by spending it, at the right time, in their political-electoral market of reference.

All this confronts institutions and civil society with the need for renewed planning capable of relaunching investments for the development and infrastructural modernisation of the areas most exposed to criminal penetration, in particular, those areas where mafia feeds on the poverty and backwardness of the territories.

We believe, therefore, that the task of a solidarity system should certainly be to raise awareness in relation to the criminal issue, but also, and above all, to encourage concrete responses to the demand for new development, new territorial planning, new cultural paths, in short, a new future.

In the past, public investments focused essentially on the repression of mafia; and, under the guise of mafia’s presence, there has been a flight from investment in social and economic infrastructures.

This has further impoverished these areas and made the criminal cartels ever stronger by transferring their criminal know-how from the local to the global fabric.
In the economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, criminal organisations are preparing to intercept the huge funds provided at various levels.

These criminal structures will attempt to exploit the foreseeable inefficiencies of the bureaucratic state and EU machinery, presenting themselves as an effective organisational structure capable of coping with the economic emergency, as they did during the 2008 crisis.

Therefore, a decisive and rapid reaction of civil society is necessary. The latter has to take the form of a European solidarity system that can intervene by calling for solidarity and practical action, creating synergies and cooperation.

1.
The following actors will be involved:

• small and medium-sized economic actors which suffered heavily the consequences of the pandemic and the blockade of activities;
• economic activities in the sector of trade and tourism (bars, restaurants, hotels, souvenir shops and all related activities);
• the agri-food industry;
• the health sector;
• those already involved in the fight against crime (cooperatives and companies that manage confiscated property).

These are economic sectors that are affected by huge investments of capital by organised crime in several member states.

This large group made of workers, entrepreneurs, immigrants will be faced by the organised underworld presenting itself as an efficient provider of financial resources, with ‘instruments of conviction’, if necessary, violent (destruction of production tools, theft, etc.).

It is useful to underline that the provision of these resources will produce ‘consensus’ that can be used, for example, in elections.

2.
The Solidarity Anti-Crime Alert System should be an informal, dynamic structure, based on the provision of free, voluntary, solidarity-based work, and primarily aimed at combating criminal organisations. However, the system must meet criteria of

• Security
• Fairness
• Output evaluation
• Promptness
• Competence and reliability

There could be two levels in the organisation of the system :

• The Antenne della Rete sul Territorio (Network of antennas). These are the actors on the ground, capable of reading and reporting phenomena and proposing solutions and interventions. The quantity and quality of the Antenne will be the real strength of this initiative. The distribution over the territory will mark the intensity of the force with which it will be possible to act to solve problems. Therefore, it is not a question of creating new structures, but of utilising those that already exist, making the most out of individual skills that may be different and complementary.
• Coordination Committee. Formed by a small number of people – expressions of the realities of the NETWORK – it examines in real time the requests for assistance and help coming from the Antenne and other instances of civil society. Consequently, it proposes the initiatives to be undertaken and supports their implementation.

It will be necessary to involve individuals who have specific expertise in various fields and who can help identify concrete ways to solve all the issues that may arise. It will be necessary to pair these ‘competent individuals’ with young people who can be trained along the way.

The Antennas will collaborate with the:

• Local public administrations
• Trade Unions (at regional and local level)
• Cooperative Organisations
• Onlus and Associations against organised crime, individual Social Cooperatives
• Immigrant and human rights associations
• Associations of artisans, traders and small entrepreneurs

This configuration should allow to

• Give immediate responses to attacks by organised crime, intervening without delay;
• Examine needs and seek shared solutions;
• Develop solidarity even between geographically distant subjects.

Adhere to this initiative by sending a message to one of the following e-mail addresses, also specifying your sector of activity and territorial sphere of action:

www.culturacontrocamorra.eu/ ==>segretariato@culturacontrocamorra.eu
www.ncocooperazione.com ==> info@ncocucina.com

For further information please call:
Franco +32479930450
Pasquale +393478307988