Mafia 2.0 is proliferating on the Swiss financial centre

Money laundering makes more and more use of information technology, according to what emerged from the recent Glicine-Acheronte investigation.

This content was published on August 25, 2023 - 4:02 pm
August 25, 2023 - 4:02 pm
4 minutes
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A recent investigation conducted in Italy, with alleged Swiss connections, would confirm how the 'Ndrangheta has been moving for some time in the world of clandestine finance, both to carry out scams and to launder funds through banking channels.

A 2.0 mafia that proves capable of exploiting the resources offered by technology: this is what emerged from the Glicine-Acheronte operation (like the infernal torrent described by Dante in the "Divine Comedy"). A river of money that, from 2019 to 2020, the 'Ndrangheta would have flowed into banks all over the world. From Southeast Asia to Brazil, from Panama to Italy, from Germany to Switzerland.

At the center of the investigation is the Megna di Papanice clan, a hamlet of Crotone. There are over a hundred suspects and 43 people who have ended up in prison in recent weeks. Among these are also two hackers: a 45-year-old Italian and a 57-year-old German.

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The latter has been defined as "the computer hub of the partnership" since his knowledge, combined with the complacency of corrupt bankers, would have served above all to launder (or attempt to do so) the millionaire proceeds of the clan, earned with drug trafficking, which they would then reinvest in the legal economy. The "washing" would have been done through clandestine trading platforms, not subject to the controls that usually supervise the buying and selling of financial products.

The other type of activity - claims the Catanzaro prosecutor's office, which conducted the investigations - consisted of various forms of fraud, such as for example bogus bank guarantee systems, set up to induce institutions to grant important credit lines.

+ "Mobsters feel relatively safe in Switzerland"

The repentant Gennaro Pulice also spoke of the latter system, who took refuge in the canton of Ticino between 2013 and 2015, where - according to him - he allegedly exploited the services of the financial center to embezzle and "clean up" dirty capital. The fictitious guarantees used by the mafia clans were also available to some foreign football clubs, including Como.

That's not all: laundering was also done through illicit withdrawals from inactive accounts or with credit cards from devices manipulated to read them.

"100% security does not exist"
How is it possible? "100% security does not exist for anyone", Alessandro Trivilini, head of the computer forensic service of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) told the microphones of RSI Radiotelevisione della Svizzera italiana. Cybercrime, he explains, "try to exploit the human factor", i.e. by trying to impersonate, for example, a bank customer "or by seeking the unvarnished complacency of someone within the bank who knows the IT architecture , the guidelines, the security procedures", offering money to these people to "open those security doors and close their eyes for some malware to enter and commit the crime".

+ Cryptomafia: the mafia 2_0

The battle against money laundering in the Swiss financial system (but in general the world one) "is a battle that will never end", declares Alberto Petruzzella, president of the Ticino Banking Association. According to Petruzzella, however, cases of corrupt personnel are very rare: "there are much more cases of collaborators who make mistakes, who do not notice or who have not carried out sufficient checks. It must be said that the underworld has become very sophisticated in this sense. There is no longer the character who shows up at the bank with a flat cap and a suitcase of money to launder". Everything has become extremely sophisticated, he adds. Personnel must be trained and increasingly sophisticated technological systems must be developed.

Meanwhile, on the dark web, advertisements from hackers continue to proliferate, placing their specialist services at the disposal of the highest bidder.

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