Here's one for you Hollander, not the most recent, but here goes:

THE CAMORRA & SACRA CORONA UNITA TEAM UP IN FUEL-SMUGGLING SCHEME, 37 ARRESTED & $56 MILLION IN ASSETS SEIZED
April 12th, 2021

Finance and military police carried out precautionary measures for 45 people as part of an investigation, conducted by the Dda of Potenza and Lecce, on the infiltration of the Casalesi clan of the Camorra and the Cicala clan of the Sacra Corona Unita in the hydrocarbon sector through nominees and tax evasion. The operation was carried out between the provinces of Salerno, Brescia, Naples, Caserta, Cosenza and Taranto.

The Casalesi cartel, rooted in Caserta but with ramifications practically everywhere, and the Cicala clan of the Sacra Corona Unita, originally from Taranto, in Puglia, had infiltrated the hydrocarbon sector, upsetting the market with fraud on excise duties and VAT and with intricate systems of false headers to circumvent controls. This emerges from the investigation coordinated by the Anti-Mafia District Directorates of Potenza and Lecce, which led to personal and real precautionary measures for 45 people to the report on the loose for another 71 suspects.

Of the precautionary measures, 26 are in prison, 11 under house arrest, 6 prohibitions of residence and 2 prohibitions of the suspension from the exercise of two members of the Corps for 6 months. The operation began in the early hours of today, April 12, carried out by the soldiers of the Guardia di Finanza of Taranto and Salerno and by the carabinieri of the Provincial Command of Salerno between the provinces of Salerno, Brescia, Naples, Caserta, Cosenza and Taranto. In addition, seizures of properties, companies, warehouses and fleets of articulated lorries, ordered by the investigating magistrates of Potenza and Lecce, were carried out against the 45 suspects, for a total value of approximately 50 million euros. The accusations are, for various reasons, of criminal association aimed at the commission of fraud on excise duties and VAT on mineral oils, fictitious registration of goods and companies, money laundering, self-laundering and use of money of illicit origin.

The investigation, we read in a note signed by the public prosecutor of Potenza, Francesco Curcio, and by the Lecce counterpart, Leonardo Leone De Castris , "confirmed how big organized crime and national mafias, by now, are financed if not in via exclusive, absolutely prevalent way, in one with drug trafficking, through these illicit smuggling activities which, in actuality, have reached gigantic proportions, which had never been reached in the past ".

In Taranto, investigators discovered, the organization revolved around the figure of Michele Cicala, who has ties to members of the Catapano-Leone clan from Taranto. The group, "using an innovative fraudulent know-how in the hydrocarbon smuggling sector, consolidated its business with that of criminal groups operating for some time in the same sectors with companies that already had their own market". He had thus allied himself with the other group, the one operating in the Vallo di Diano, between Basilicata and Campania.

"Basically - explain the Prosecutors - huge quantities of fuel for agricultural use were sold, which as known benefits from particular tax concessions, to subjects who then placed it on the normal market for transport, very often using the so-called white pumps". In practice, the Taranto group provided the Campania / Lucanian group with the names of agricultural entrepreneurs, unaware of all, to whom the companies fictitiously invoiced the sale of agricultural fuel; in reality the product was sold illegally to other economic operators who then placed it on the market, earning about 50% of the actual cost of each liter of petrol.

The group had also devised a system to prevent agricultural entrepreneurs from discovering the scam: "through computer mechanisms, they deceived the telematic system of the Revenue Agency , which was unable to deliver the electronic invoice to the fictitious customer / farmer apparent recipient of the caraburante who, therefore, remained unaware of the fake sale operation carried out using his name ".

The product came out of the tax warehouses with false documents attesting to the transport of agricultural fuel. In case of control by the police, the group used the same stratagem of the organization unveiled a few days ago in Rome: a pump was activated through a device that injected the dye into the vehicle's tank, changing the color and making it look like the agricultural one. Once it arrived in the commercial depots of the suspects, the truck stopped to simulate the unloading of agricultural fuel and the loading of that for transport, and then left again with false documentation. Once reached the final deposit, the transaction was not registered and therefore the black sale was completed. According to the magistrates, this activity yielded about 30 million euros every year.

On the Lucanian side, the investigations focused on the fuel companies of the Petrullo Group, led by Massimo Petrullo, which in recent years had experienced an exponential increase in turnover and investments. It emerged that the economic boom of the company coincided with the entry into the corporate companies of " members of the well-known Caserta family of Diana (of San Cipriano d'Aversa), who had invested in the company, in hidden form, capital from, with reasonable certainty and in any case at the level of circumstantial gravity, from previous illegal activities, especially in the waste trafficking sector, activities of very significant dimensions in relation to which Camorra boss Raffaele Diana had been challenged at the time by the Public Prosecutor of Naples, the aggravating circumstance of the facilitating purpose of the Casalesi clan ".

Over time, the magistrates point out, the Diana family had assumed a predominant role, so much so that Petrullo, now ousted from control, had tried to secretly agree with the Tarantini and had " even hired a killer to kill Diana, an attempt later abandoned " ; the disagreements had not resulted in a war "only because of the mutual interest in not raising excessive alarms about the illegal activities perpetrated, extremely profitable for both sides".

Among the illegal conducts, also "the participation in a tender for the supply of fuels in favor of the Consortium for the Reclamation of the Tyrrhenian Cosentino Basins, awarded through an irregular agreement, guaranteed by the proximity to a representative of local crime, able to impose itself even in a different territory from that of election. The full involvement in this episode of an employee of the Consortium, now subjected to house arrest, has been confirmed ". Finally, the complicity of a carabiniere was discoveredwho allegedly provided the group with information on the investigation in exchange for some cans of fuel which it then resold; the soldier, after the emergence of the elements against him, had already been transferred to another province in non-operational assignment in November 2019.

The operation follows another one in a few days that was carried out by the Guardia di Finanza between Campania, Lazio and Calabria and which revealed the interests of the Camorra (in particular the Moccia clan) and the 'Ndrangheta in the same sector; in that case the pivotal point of the investigation was the heiress and singer Anna Bettozzi who, according to the accusations, with the funds arrived from the Camorra had raised the fortunes of her company, Max Petroli, and had destabilized the market with a round of false invoicing and fulfillment.