“When there is an emergency, the mafia benefits from it,” Sergio Nazzaro, an expert on organized crime, who formerly served as spokesman for the president of the Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Commission told OCCRP. “From any moment of the emergency, from the destruction, from the helpers and from the recovery of the land, the mafia benefits.”
With over 120,000 hectares of land burned, many farmers are desperate and in Italy, when desperation strikes, it is too often the mafia who is the first to step in. However, their support always comes at a price.
It’s not just farms which are burning, but massive swaths of Italy's national parks. With US$245 billion allocated to Italy for “green transition” projects as part of the EU’s post-pandemic economic recovery plan, a good portion of the burned land is expected to be included into reforestry projects, an industry Italy’s mafia groups have already been proven to have infiltrated.
That, coupled with the fact that the blazes are concentrated in the south of the country where the mafia is most powerful, have even led some to posit that the mafia may be behind the fires.
On the other hand, the affected regions are in the hottest and most arid part of the peninsula.
Roberto Cingolani, Italy’s Minister for the Green Transition, recently told parliament that 70% of fires appear to be the result of human actions, whether they are due to negligence or malice remains the question.
“I don’t think there is one plan,” Nazzaro said. “There are many reasons to start a fire. Maybe you want the land of someone else, maybe for revenge, maybe for the restoration money.”
In Sicily however, where the ‘green transition’ is offering significant funding for solar energy projects, Italian farmers have approached the island’s Anti-mafia commission upon finding their fields burning after they refused offers to sell them so the new owners could fill them with solar panels, Live Sicilia reported.
