THE DIA, THE STATE POLICE AND THE GUARDIA DI FINANZA SEIZED ASSETS WORTH 30 MILLION EUROS FROM TWO ENTREPRENEURS FROM CASERTA ALLEGEDLY CLOSE TO THE SO-CALLED “CLAN DEI CASALESI” AND “BELFORTE” IN MARCIANISE (CE).

The Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, the Anti-Crime Division of the Police HQ in Caserta and the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza in Caserta carried out an asset-related seizure order and placed some companies under the judicial supervision. The order was issued by the Court in S. Maria Capua Vetere – Section for the Application pf Preventive Measures – upon a proposal of the DIA Director and the Police Chief in Caserta, with the cooperation of the Guardia di Finanza, against two brothers operating in the cement and restaurant sector in Caserta.

These subjects, who were close to the camorra-type organization known as “Belforte” were detected during a judicial investigation carried out in 2014 by the Mobile Squad in Caserta, in coordination with the District Antimafia Directorate in Naples. The judicial proceeding ended in 2016 for one of the targeted persons who was sentenced to 8 years in prison and a fine of 8,000.00 euros by the G.I.P. of the Court in Naples. The same sentence was confirmed in 2017 in second instance – becoming irrevocable in 2018 – by the Court of Appeal in Naples sentencing him to 5 years, 5 months and 10 days in prison and a fine of 4,600.00 euros.

Thanks to the declarations made by several cooperating witnesses, a particular structured type of “extortion” was ascertained linked to the companies which they owned.

The men, called also “the spies of extortion”, devised a criminal scam which was carried out both by submitting higher, inflated invoices than the actual payable amount of the provisions, thus succeeding in creating “slush funds” used to pay extortion, and by organizing meetings between the victims of extortion and the members of the clan. The system was so well established that sometimes the entrepreneurs themselves, when starting a new business, spontaneously addressed the members of the organization in order to settle the issue.

Today’s order seizes assets and places under judicial supervision a number of companies for an estimated total value of 30 million euros, thus targeting, either directly or indirectly, the available assets of one of the above-mentioned entrepreneurs. In detail, 3 companies and 75 immovable assets, located in the province of Caserta, Benevento, Salerno, L’Aquila and Parma (18 plots of land, 18 houses, 2 industrial sites, 36 garages/warehouses and 1 timeshare on the Amalfi coast), as well as 99 financial assets and 10 registered movable assets (5 vehicles, including a Ferrari and a Porsche, 3 vessels, and 2 trailers) were involved. The companies available to the other targeted person were placed under judicial supervision for one year. This latter preventive measure, primarily countering the interference of organized crime into business activities, aims to recover the company to the natural rules of the market eliminating the interference of dangerous subjects.

Caserta, 23 February 2022