ROME - Italy is preparing a package of measures aimed at modernising the country’s anti-mafia law after the murder of six Italians in Germany last week, its justice minister said in an interview.
“We are in the process of drawing up new standards, new preventive measures, on the confiscation of goods and monitoring illicit funds,” Justice Minister Clemente Mastella told the Italian daily Il Messaggero.
The measures come after the murder of six Italians last Wednesday in the western city of Duisburg, Germany.
The Italian authorities have attributed the killings to an internal feud within the notoriously violent ’Ndrangheta clan, one of the country’s best known crime families.
Mastella said the government would reveal the proposals in October. But he said they included mandatory judicial investigations into assets held by suspected mafiosi, and the training of special judicial police teams to head up investigations.
“We are trying to modernise anti-mafia laws,” he added.
The ’Ndrangheta, once seen as a relatively minor outfit, had annual assets totalling 40 billion euros (54 billion dollars), property on five continents and occasional investments in the Frankfurt stock market, said Mastella.
International action against the mafia, particularly in Europe, needed to be stepped up, he said.

the thing is i cant see it really making a difference the mafia have had years of law enforcement trying to break them and yes they have been on the verge of breaking down families before but they always come back and they do seem to learn from there mistakes well sometimes anyway ;).

http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=543556

ITALIAN police moved heavily against the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta yesterday, arresting more than 30 members in raids across southern Calabria following the murder in Germany of six gangsters earlier this month.

But Italy faces a new war as Sicilian Mafia bosses, in a prison ritual, signalled they had joined forces against the state.

Most of the arrests took place in San Luca, the town where two rival clans of the 'Ndrangheta crime families are based. Three suspects were found hiding in a bunker in the centre of town, officials said.

The operation, which involved some 300 police, did not target the killers involved in the murders in Germany. But it put a total of 32 suspects behind bars, averting the risk of possible further violence, said Renato Cortese, a police official in the regional capital of Reggio Calabria.

"Presumably there was going to be a reaction, given that these two clans hate each other so much," Mr Cortese said.

Meanwhile prison sources confirmed that Sicilian gang bosses, Leoluca Bagarella and Nitto Santapaola, had exchanged their gold wedding rings.

Mafia experts said the ritual symbolised "informal marriage" and could spell trouble for the authorities as, in the past, both have been sworn enemies.

Santapaola, a godfather of the Mafia on the eastern side of Sicily, failed to back Bagarella's brother-in-law - jailed superboss Toto Riina- in a murderous bombing campaign in the 1990's.

Santapaola's gesture to the Riina clan points to a united Mafia, poised to return to the offensive after a non-aggression pact ordered by "boss of bosses" Bernardo Provenzano.

Provenzano, who had evaded Italian justice for over 40 years, was caught in a farm outside Corleone in April 2006, 13 years after his former co-chief Riina.

Despite an unwavering promptness to order hits against rivals, Provenzano never approved of the Riina-ordered murders of anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino - nor a subsequent bomb campaign that claimed several lives in Florence, Milan and Rome.

Sergio Lari, an assistant prosecutor in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, said of the prison ritual: "This is much more than just a coincidence.

"Both bosses leave their wedding rings hanging from a nail in their cell for the other to find - it's a very clear sign and also a very unsettling one. It points to a union between both families with the Italian state the most likely target," he added.

"Both men were very attached to their wedding rings as both their spouses are dead - Bagarella's wife Vincenzina committed suicide while Santapaola's wife, Carmela, was killed in a hit."

It also emerged yesterday that one of the victims in this month's Duisburg massacre in Germany had just been "initiated" into the 'Ndrangheta.

Italian police sources revealed that inside the trouser pocket of one victim, Tommaso Venturi, were the remains of a burnt prayer card showing a picture of the archangel Gabriel. According to mob rules recruits hold out their hand while the prayer card is lit and recite the words: "As this holy prayer card burns so my flesh will burn if I betray the family."

Venturi had just turned 18 when he was gunned down with five other mobsters in an Italian restaurant in Duisburg, western Germany two weeks ago.

The deaths were part of an on-going feud between two rival families from San Luca, provoked by an egg throwing incident at a 1991 carnival.

Among those apprehended yesterday were the brothers of two of the victims in Germany, as well as top bosses of both clans, and nine women from the families.

While most suspects were arrested in San Luca, some were arrested in a town near Rome. Those held will face charges including mafia association, murder and arms trafficking, authorities said.

Piero Grasso, the national anti-Mafia prosecutor said: "These arrests show that the state will not remain inert in the face of such serious matters and the operation was also aimed at preventing further escalation of this feud.

"Naturally we are still looking for others and we are working not just with German police but with the police forces of other European nations."

Giuliano Amato, Italy's interior minister said: "This is a strong and necessary response from the state to those in San Luca who have already provoked much terror."

Police in Calabria also revealed that, in order to avoid detection, members of the Calabrian Mafia had used public phone boxes to communicate with each other and also spoke in code