The edible or fat dormouse (Glis glis) was a delicacy in Ancient Rome, when it was fattened on walnuts, and is still much appreciated in parts of Italy. However, it is now a protected species and when food inspectors raided an autumn festival in Calabria they found several rodent casseroles.

In their defence the restaurateurs say that there were actually rats in the stew.

Investigators and DNA experts from the Forestry Corps police, who have been tracking illegal dormice hunters in the Calabrian mountains, took samples from the delicacies on offer at the festival and analysed the meat in their laboratories.

Alessandro Bettosi, the Forestry Corps officer who led the raid, declined to give details of the case for fear of compromising continuing investigations into the illegal hunting network. He said that the accused chefs claimed that their dishes contained rats, which are not protected species, rather than dormice. The defendants hoped to escape with a fine for the lesser offence of contravening public health laws.

Andrea Brutti, of the Italian Society for the Protection of Animals, said that illegal hunting of dormice was rife in Calabria and that 20,000 of them were consumed a year in the Catanzaro area alone. “Demand is now so high that the edible dormouse is becoming an endangered species,” he said. He added that the illegal trade was linked to the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, and that the woodland habitat of dormice was at risk from forest fires and development.

Connoisseurs of the edible dormouse say that it has a strong smell and is for strong stomachs only.

Mr Brutti said that the hunt was at its height in early autumn, when the dormice take on extra fat to get them through their period of hibernation.

Some people catch dormice at other times of the year and fatten them up at home, a habit that dates to Roman times, when the legions took dormice with them on military expeditions as a food reserve.

Edible dormice are hunted at night. They are either shot, skewered with long metal spikes thrust into tree cavities, or trapped, using chestnuts and walnuts as bait. Their loud squeaking enables hunters to locate them and turn searchlights on them.

They are also found in parts of France, Spain and Greece. They eat seeds, leaves, buds, nuts, berries, acorns, soft fruits and, occasionally, insects and small birds.

In Britain Glis glis, or Myoxus glis, was introduced 100 years ago by Walter Rothschild, later Baron Rothschild, at Tring Park, in Hertfordshire. Some escaped into the countryside but the population is still largely confined to the Beaconsfield, Aylesbury and Luton triangle. In Britain, people are allowed to kill and eat them.

Richard Owen, Rome. The Times Online: www.timesonline.co,uk

That driving in Italy is dangerous is confirmed by the fact that about 6,000 people die in car accidents each year. A report of the Italian Automobile Club asserts that, among drivers under 24, more than 40% break the speed limit, 37% don't wear seat belts, and 7% drive when drunk. From my observations, however, these figures are a gross underestimate of the reality.

A couple of months ago the Vatican showed its concern by publishing a 60-page document entitled Orientations for the Pastoral of the Road, a guide to how Christian motorists should behave. This starts with the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." It explains that "the road must not be an instrument of death, but one of communion," then it tells people to drive with "courtesy, correctness and prudence." Ooooh, ok, shit, since you put it like that then every teenager gripped by angst inspiring hormonal surges and the urge to display machismo will buckle up, refuse to drink & drive, & obey the posted speed limits. Coz, you know, the Vatican said so…

"The road is a place of sociality, humanity and charity," says Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers, and a driver should regard other motorists not as rivals, but as "companions of the road." But this is entirely futile, given that Italians are loath to admit that they drive in any other than an exemplary way.

The archbishop says that he has talked to many Italian priests, and none has ever heard anyone at confession admit to committing a sin at the wheel of a car. Some priests, he says, have even started trying to squeeze confessions out of people by asking such questions as: "How did you drive last weekend, my son?" "Very well," is the usual reply. What the fuck?! If my priest asked me how I drove last weekend I’d tell him to bugger off, let me confess the sins I want to confess and not to concern himself with those sins I was ok with.

The woman was due to be put on a flight to Tehran on August 16th. But her removal was delayed to allow for further consultation. Italian lesbian, gay and civil rights groups have called for a sit-in outside the British embassy in Rome on Monday. In the last few days campaigners have also conducted meetings with the British ambassador, Edward Chaplin.

Barbara Pollastrini, the equal opportunities minister in Italy's centre-left government, said there were "obvious risks" for Emambakhsh's life. She said everything should be done to ensure her human rights were respected, adding: "As far as I am concerned, that ought not to rule out the possibility of welcoming Pegah to our country if necessary."

Ms Pollastrini said that Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, was following the case and that she had spoken to him about it shortly before making her comments. A spokesman for the Italian civil rights group ‘Everyone’ said yesterday that Emambakhsh was a married woman with two sons who had had a relationship with a younger woman. "The younger woman was arrested, tortured and then condemned to death. We don't know what has happened to her", the spokesman said.

The spokesman for ‘Everyone’ said that, under Iranian law, the punishment for lesbianism was 100 strokes of the cane, administered in public. But he said that Emambakhsh, who had been declared "an enemy of public order" on websites close to the Iranian authorities, risked death by stoning or hanging. Emambakhsh fled Iran and applied for asylum in Britain two years ago. After her disappearance, her father had been seized and tortured to force him to disclose her whereabouts.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "All applications for asylum are carefully considered by trained caseworkers based on accurate up-to-date information, taking into account all the circumstances of an application. We examine with great care each individual case before removal and we will not remove anyone who we believe is at risk on their return.” That’s all well and good, but, on August 13th, after Emambakhsh's application for asylum was rejected, she was arrested in Sheffield.

Fucking England can’t get it right, ever: ASBO’s, ass-backwards deportation rulings, and the publicly acceptable obscene levels of bigotry, and stereotyping. I wish I didn’t have to go back there, but I gotta visit the family every now and then. I detest the country, passionately; the backwardness, ignorance, and the sense of self-importance. It’s a big reason why us Brits are fleeing by the thousands to set up shop elsewhere in the world. Soon, the only ones that’ll be left are the dumb fucks harking back to the “good old days” of the British Empire, and the poor bastards who can’t afford to leave.

Until recently the closely knit ‘Ndrangheta network confined its activities to rural southern Italy. But Italian anti-Mafia police say that it is now one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world, much of its success fed by the growing international cocaine trade. Eighty per cent of Europe’s cocaine allegedly passes through the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro; in 2004 police seized 7,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles in the port. In Colombia, 5 months ago, it was discovered that a submarine was being built to serve in the Colombia-Calabria cocaine trafficking route (more on that in the next couple of days). ’Ndrangheta operations have also spread to money laundering, extortion, prostitution, the euro-slave-trade, hard-core pornography, counterfeiting, and arms trafficking.

Milan prosecutors say that the ’Ndrangheta has taken control of illegal drugs trafficking — mostly cocaine — and legitimate businesses in the north, and together with its international links has an annual turnover of around $50 billion, equivalent to 3.5 per cent of Italian GDP. A more accurate assessment would at least double this figure. What the prosecutors don’t say, but which is fact nonetheless, is that the ‘Ndrangheta and Sicilian Cosa Nostra are partners in numerous and significant joint venture partnerships – particularly in northern regions.

Earlier this year authorities in Milan voiced concern over the “infiltration” of the Milanese economy by men with Calabrian accents. When a local mayor near Milan excluded Calabrian-run building companies from public contracts he received a “Happy Easter” card with a bullet inside it and his car was set on fire.

Furthermore, the ‘Ndrangheta has gained powerful behind-the-scenes political influence in Calabria. Two years ago, Franco Fortugno, the anti-Mafia deputy chairman of the regional Parliament, was gunned down as he voted in the town of Locri. The governor of Calabria, Agazio Loiero, said afterwards that the ’Ndrangheta had become “even stronger and more dangerous” than the Sicilian Mafia.

The Duisburg shootings were part of a long-running faida between two ‘ndrine in the Calabrian town of San Luca. According to police in Italy, the Pelle-Romeo family were the first to kill in the 16-year-old feud, shooting dead Francesco Strangio, 20, and Domenico Nirta, 19, with two others left seriously injured. The boys had been hunted down after throwing eggs in a Pelle-Romeo bar during a town feast. Over the next nine years, there were a series of killings by both clans until a truce was called in 2000, which held until last Christmas when Maria Strangio, wife of alleged boss Giovanni Nirta, was murdered and her five-year-old nephew injured by a stray bullet.

The faida has grown exponentially in the past 16 years, and is now fed by asserting strength and power as well as rivalry over international drugs and arms trafficking, extortion and other business endeavors. What it comes down to, these days, is a run-of-the-mill 21st century turf war, with billions in annual profit at stake. Luigi De Sena, the deputy head of the Italian police and former police chief at Reggio Calabria, said: “This score-settling is unprecedented. People from Calabria have a very strong presence in Germany but so far they had kept a low profile, trying not to attract attention.” As Italy’s most senior anti-Mafia investigator, Piero Grasso, has commented: "The presence of Calabrian’s in Germany is very strong but until now they have kept themselves to themselves and attempted not to be conspicuous."

Thirty eight year old Giovanni Nirta is suspected to have dispatched last weeks ‘Ndrangheta hit squad to Duisburg in Germany, to execute six Pelle-Romeo ‘ndranghetisti, including the man who allegedly killed his wife, Maria Strangio. Nirta denies it. He doesn’t say anything about being the boss of San Luca’s Nirta-Strangio ‘ndrina, despite the media’s ignorant interpretation of his remarks. He has been hounded by the press – suddenly they all wanna talk to “a real live boss.” Fucking parasites (the press, that is) turning San Luca into Disney-Italia, in the same way that last year they turned Corleone into Disney-Sicilia. Of course, as chief suspect (and possibly local boss…), Nirta can’t bust outta town. So he’s left to deal with the miserable news hounds showing up on his doorstep. They wouldn’t be there if the place wasn’t swarming with cops. They wouldn’t care, they wouldn’t dare. That’s why I detest them.

In the one sound bite that Nirta has given he claims that he is a poor laborer who scrapes a living from picking olives and tending to his tomato patch. “I know absolutely nothing about this. They call me a boss, but the only time I was sentenced it was for robbery in 1986.” The man is, without a doubt, brilliant; he’s playing the press for their own ignorance, and setting up the Italian justice system for humiliation if they dare to haul him in.

Furthermore, by phrasing it in this way he is not lying. He doesn’t say if he is a boss or not, he denies nothing. Nirta exhibits the utmost in honorable behavior – he didn’t lie, and he didn’t deny his ‘ndrina. Truly, calculated genius. If Nirta is arrested the nation will ask why, if he is the boss of the ‘ndrina, has he only got one charge against him, from 21 years ago, when he was a minor. Nirta’s track record is clean, as should be the track record of any major player in the honor-game. He is sharp, calculated, and strategic: “I am just a widower looking after his three children; a poor laborer who gets by picking olives and minding the vegetable patch.” he told reporters.

It gets better: when asked about Marco Marmo, the man suspected in Nirta’s wife’s murder, the man who was allegedly the main target in Duisburg, the press is given this: “I know Marmo, he's a good kid,” said Nirta, flanked by Maria's sisters and mother, clad in mourning black. “If I wanted revenge, why should I have waited until he was in Germany?” And that’s just the thing, why would he? Well maybe because he understands that, in San Luca, folks are starting to get a bit disconcerted over the violence in the last 8 months. Because what Nirta needs more than anything (if he's the boss) in order to secure his the status, power, and security of his 'ndrina, and which he understands very well indeed, is the support of San Luca’s townsfolk.

Shit, Cosa Nostra and the ‘Ndrangheta should be contracted to take charge of the allied forces in the Middle East. These guys might not have political science PhD’s, but they’re stratospherically more adept at long-term strategy and successful tactical maneuver than anyone in the London-Washington D.C. circle jerk.

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 modernize anti-mafia laws,” he added.

Aww, bless his little cotton socks. But here’s the deal: Italy’s judicial system is beyond convoluted, inequitable, corrupt, and capricious; furthermore, the real movers and shakers are wealthy, often in public office or the security agencies, and this is a land where that means they won’t even be investigated.

Ummm, oh yeah, P2. ‘Nuff said.

And, good lord, I almost forgot: Location! Location! Location! Ain’t no paesano gonna give up his childhood homie who happens to be the biggest provider in the village these days. Not while Rome continues to shit on the south; and not for a long time after they stop, if they ever do.

The killings were the latest and bloodiest round of murders in a 16-year-old vendetta that began when the members of one 'ndrine threw eggs at members of a rival clan in San Luca. Later that day bullets replaced eggs, and the faida was born. This faida is performed mostly on religious holidays, and the Duisburg Assumption Day incident, of course, coincided with the morning of Ferr'agosto, Italy's most important summer holiday. The tension is palpable, increasing daily, as we approach September 2nd… the day that ‘Ndranghetisti from around the world will join civilians, politicians, and ‘holy’ men at the annual pilgrimage to San Luca, in celebration of the festival of Madonna della Montagne.

Although less widely known outside of Mafia-observer-circles than is Cosa Nostra (Sicily), the Calabrian syndicate is deeply rooted and very wealthy: "With the 'Ndrangheta, the motives aren't only about honor but above all about economic interests - money laundering and drug trafficking," assistant police chief Nicola Cavaliere said. About 80 percent of Europe's cocaine supply is believed to come in to the continent via Calabria.

The Duisburg killings are exceptional and unusual because Mafia groups – ‘Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra, whomever – have a huge interest in investing abroad, in property, hotels and restaurants. It's a bad idea to attract attention in this way. '’Ndrangheta has the strength of greater structural flexibility than does Cosa Nostra – but the weakness of making mistakes like the Duisburg affair. The ‘Ndrangheta clearly demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses that come from blood ties: there have been practically no turncoats because it would mean turning against your own flesh and blood; but the ‘ndrine are much more vulnerable to blood feud deterioration such as that which has thrown them onto the world stage in the last week.

What anti-Mafia investigators and some Mafia scholars are discounting, however, is that these ‘ndrine are well aware of their strengths and vulnerabilities, alike. The final solution will undoubtedly be the out and out annihilation of one 'ndrine. Much like in the 1980’s when Cosa Nostra’s Corleonese boss, Totò Riina, ordered the death of every Inzerillo in the world. In Riina’s words: "Not even a seed of theirs must remain on the face of the Earth." And Riina’s sentiment appears to epitomize the emergent strategy of engagement within the San Luca ‘ndrine.

Immediately following the Duisburg incident Italian police and anti-mafia investigators swarmed through the village of San Luca in Calabria. Police searched dozens of houses and mounted roadblocks in and around San Luca, but made no arrests. Many of the houses where they conducted searches had, they said, been hastily abandoned.

Well, what the fuck did they expect? In fact, rumor has it, ‘hot’ residences were abandoned well before the police arrived in San Luca, after a late night phone call from Duisburg, before cops arrived at the scene of the killings, whilst two were still breathing, whilst all six bodies were still slightly warm to the touch…

Yeah, you can bet your ass their holding their fucking breath in San Luca. I, for one, will be saying a prayer on the morning of September 2nd that, if anything pops off, it remains within the confines of those who are in the life, leaving untouched those who are not.

San Luca is the archetypical southern Italian mountain town. It is Corleone, Prizzi, Lercara Friddi, Leonforte, Nicosia, Agira… It has the same winding alleyways, and these days the only people to be seen are widows in black. All of the young men in town had vanished by Saturday. According to friends in the area, the sole activity has been at a roadblock at the entrance to the town manned by Carabinieri cradling sub-machine pistols, and mourners turning up to pay their respects at the house of the parents of 16-year-old Francesco Giorgi, the youngest victim in Duisburg. An Italian television crew was asked to leave town. Not even the parish priest, Father Pino Strangio, was to be found in his church. But then, Francesco was Pino’s cousin’s son.

The curate, Father Stephen Fernando, from Tamil Nadu in India, has been in San Luca for nine years. It is, he conceded to the press, “a difficult village.” San Luca, in the words of a study published in 2005 by Italy’s domestic intelligence service, is “the cradle of [‘Ndrangheta] and its epicenter.” Above the town is the shrine of Our Lady of Polsi, the spiritual focus of an organization that leans heavily on religious symbolism – titles given to ranking ‘ndranghetisti include “saint” and “evangelist

Every year, in early September, towns and villages shut down throughout the Aspromonte region of Calabria. The ‘Ndrangheta closes shop. This is a sacred time of year in when civilians and ‘ndrina members alike pay their respects to the Madonna of the Mountain. In the town of San Luca, recently made infamous by the Duisburg killings, the bosses, the 'ndranghetisti, the lawyers, politicians, priests, and farmers will all come together at the shrine, in the mountains behind the town. This annual ritual is a beautiful sight, richly funded, replete with procession, church service, and feast. The event is marked by a traditional tarantella – a hypnotic, symbolic, and highly ritualized medieval dance.

Tourists descend on the Aspromonte for this event. Coaches unload hundreds of Catholic tourists who come to the area in order to participate in the religious festival. But what may seem like a quaint folk festival to tourists or a religious observance to ‘Catholi-tourists’ is far more ritualized and symbolic. It is in the performance of the tarantella that the current power structure of the local ‘ndrine is revealed: Whomever the ‘ndrina leader invites into the dancing circle – and the timing of that invitation – speaks volumes about rank and status in local, regional, and international ‘ndrine hierarchies. This year German investigators will also be showing a keen interest in traditional rituals at San Luca. Most of the men who will be dancing in the San Luca Tarantella are members of the two 'Ndrangheta ‘ndrine involved in the Duisburg incident: the Vottari-Pelle-Romeo and Strangio-Nirta ‘ndrine.

Enzo Ciconte, the author of several books on the ‘Ndrangheta and a former consultant to the Italian parliament’s anti-mafia commission, believes that the importance of the San Luca feud has, until now, been underestimated. “It is the ‘families’ of San Luca who have always decided if other families are, or are not, part of the ‘Ndrangheta. If, say, in Britain, or Holland, or Germany you wish to set up a new locale (clan), and you don’t get the approval of the ‘Ndrangheta of San Luca, then your gang is not part of the ‘Ndrangheta.”

In the past, he said, the town’s clans had been on sufficiently good terms to be able to reach common decisions. But by dividing them bitterly, the feud had cast doubt on who properly represented the San Luca ‘Ndrangheta, thereby creating an issue of legitimacy at the very heart of the syndicate. Such was the pressure to resolve the feud, said Ciconte, that barring a combination of internal mediation and concerted intervention by the state, “there could now be a bloodbath”. Small wonder the young men have vanished from the streets of San Luca.

As for the mayor, Giuseppe Mammoliti of the Left Democrats, when asked if he had a comment on the events in Duisburg said, guardedly, “What sort of comment?” He is, incidentally, on vacation at an undisclosed location. “I am truly sorry about what has happened. That is all. Nothing else.”

In the wake of the Duisburg bloodshed Giuliano Amato, the Italian Minister for the Interior (who I railed against in early August) promptly named the two warring ‘ndrine, and the motive behind the killings. Italian investigators complained that German prosecutors have been far too hesitant to proceed against the types of gangsters believed to be behind the Duisburg killings. In fact, experts with Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) had already identified the Da Bruno restaurant as a "base for criminal drug and counterfeit money activities" a full 15 years ago, but it apparently never took any action.

One week ago, last Tuesday night, the Da Bruno restaurant in Duisburg was the scene of late-night festivities to celebrate the birthday of Tommaso Francesco Venturi – a trainee who would turn 18 at midnight. The restaurant manager, 38-year old Sebastiano Strangio, closed the restaurant at 2:15 a.m. A few minutes later Strangio and five other men – including the newly 18-year old Venturi – walked to their cars parked outside Da Bruno’s. These would be the last steps for Strangio, Venturi, the two waiters (Marco and Francesco Pergola, 19 and 21), and two visitors from Italy (Francesco Giorgi, 16, and Marco Marmo, 25).

Police investigators presume that there were probably two killers waiting for the men in an alley. Investigators are working with the hypothesis that the six victims got into their cars and were immediately attacked. The hit men fired at least 70 shots, fired from automatic weapons. The bullets pierced windshields, metal and the heads, abdomens and lower bodies of the victims -- until all six were dead. They then shot each victim once in the head for good measure. The authorities insist they are following many leads in their investigation, but by late last week German police were clearly focusing on the connection to San Luca and wading into the midst of a protracted faida – a lethal tit-for-tat feud between two San Luca ‘ndrine – the Vottari-Pelle-Romeo and the Strangio-Nirta.

Maria Strangio’s tomb bears the photograph of a young woman with lush, dark hair wearing pendant earrings. It also has an inscription: “Your beautiful youth was shattered when everyone was smiling at you. Death carried you far away. It separated you from your loved ones who every hour repeat your name in the silent, empty house where everyone remembers you.” She was murdered in an ambush on Christmas Day last year. Her loved ones’ angry refusal to forget should remain uppermost in the minds of investigators in Duisburg. Maria Strangio came from one of two ‘ndrine enmeshed in the faida. The Duisburg victims were from the other.

Police speculate that Marco Marmo was the principal target of the Duisburg attack. Italian investigators say that Marmo was involved in the murder of 33-year-old Maria Strangio, who was the wife of Giovanni Luca Nirta. Immediately after her killing Marmo fled to relatives in Duisburg. Maria Strangio’s widower is believed to be the head of the Strangio-Nirta ‘ndrina. This explains why Marmo, if he were the assassin of Maria Strangio, would have had to leave San Luca in order to escape the revenge of the Strangio-Nirta ‘ndrina. Authorities believe that the real target was Maria Strangio’s husband, Giovanni Luca Nirta. A failed attempt to kill the boss of an ‘ndrina is a big fucking deal, generally a death sentence. But accidentally killing his wife in the process, well, Germany isn’t far enough. Nor is Brazil. He will make it his life’s purpose to avenge that one. No wonder the Duisburg hit men made absolutely sure that Marmo was dead.

There had been earlier victims in the faida since it began 15 years before Maria Strangio was killed. One was her father, Antonio. But the killing of Maria gave the feud an unprecedented lethal vigor. Even before the Duisburg incident, five people have died since Christmas in presumed vendetta killings in and around San Luca. The fear now is of an explosion of reciprocal violence that spreads beyond San Luca to encompass other towns, and other ‘ndrine. “God help us,” said a man believed to be the sexton, quoted in the press but declining to give his name. “We hope for peace. But this is a land forgotten by God and man alike.”

'Ndranghetisti are all too familiar with the journey northward. By 2000, some 160 members of the group were officially registered in Germany, including close relatives of ‘ndrine leaders. According to an internal BKA document from 2000, the 'Ndrangheta has already expanded its operations from its original base in Duisburg to points throughout Germany. One of those places is the eastern city of Erfurt, an 'Ndrangheta base in Germany since the mid-1990s. When police stormed the Paganini Restaurant in 1996 as part of the investigation of an ‘Ndrangheta-linked murder, they encountered their boss, Richard Dewes, the state's interior minister at the time, and even his boss, then-state Governor Bernhard Vogel. A noticeably large number of the staff at that Erfurt restaurant is of Calabrian descent. Many waiters share the same last names as known ‘ndrine, whose members figure prominently in Italian police investigation files. Some of the employees at Paganini’s previously worked in the Da Bruno pizzeria or in other Duisburg restaurants, which Italian authorities believe to be controlled by 'Ndrangheta ‘ndrine.

Furthermore ‘ndranghetisti are well established in the ranks of the Erfurt upper middle class. They have acted as sponsors for the local football club for some time now and are known for the generosity of their donations to local orphanages and cultural institutions. According to Italian and German investigators ‘ndranghetisti hold significant real estate portfolios in Erfurt and are the owner-operators of numerous stores and restaurants throughout the city, particularly in the prime real estate market of it’s thriving downtown area. Investigators believe that the mafia's bases in Germany are used primarily for clandestine financial transactions. This is clearly a dangerous imperative to presume and will surely detract from any decent investigation. More importantly by attempting to close down the money-laundering aspects of German ‘ndranghetisti the authorities will meet with fierce resistance and are exposing themselves – politicians and police – to the type of shutdown witnessed in Sicily in the early 1990’s.

In 1999, the state Office of Criminal Investigation in Stuttgart investigated an Italian from San Luca who had allegedly laundered millions through a local bank. The man claimed that he managed a profitable car dealership, and authorities were unable to prove that the business was not the source of his money. Seven years ago the BKA concluded that "the activities of this 'Ndrangheta clan represent a multi-regional criminal phenomenon." But despite their certainty, they have done little since then to address the problem.

One anti-Mafia investigator, Salvatore Boemi, has been outspoken about German authorities’ inadequacy in preventing the spread of ‘ndrine throughout Germany. He has said in the press that the Germans have "underestimated" the organization in the past. Alberto Cisterna, of Italy's Direzione Nazionale Antimafia, agrees, calling German investigators' approach to dealing with the 'Ndrangheta "very soft." Ercole D'Alessandro, an anti-Mafia police specialist in Calabria, says that the German judiciary should "finally realize" that quick action is needed. The ‘Ndrangheta is not just using Germany as a "place to relax," but "also as a field of operations," especially for drug deals, says Hermann von Langsdorff, a federal prosecutor and German member of Eurojust, a European Union investigative unit.

In most of the ‘Ndrangheta cases brought in Germany prosecutors have only managed to pin individual crimes to individual ‘ndranghetisti, rather than to a group or an ‘ndrina. German criminal laws offer much more latitude to prosecutors than they have actually used against organized crime. But it is extremely difficult to build a case based on charges of forming or being a member of a foreign criminal organization. And 'ndranghetisti adhere strictly to normative codes of honor, loyalty, and silence, what most civilians would understand as the code of omertà. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to find evidence sufficiently airtight to satisfy the strict standards of German judges. And, lets not forget, the ‘Ndrangheta are very adept at ensuring that they dot all their i’s and cross all their t’s. It would come as no surprise to learn that they have a few judges in pocket already: The ‘Ndrangheta was implicated in about two dozen criminal investigations in Germany in 2006; but not a single conviction has been handed down.

Part of the problem is that there are few German specialists who understand how ‘ndrine are structured. Shit, there are few Italian anti-Mafia investigators who understand ‘ndrine or Sicilian cosche structure so how the hell can the Germans do any better?! The German cases being brought against ‘ndranghetisti are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the true scope of the ‘Ndrangheta's dealings in Germany. In 1999, police in Cologne seized assets worth about €9 million ($12.5 million) from a Calabrian who, according to the BKA, made his fortune in the construction business which was already widely known to be controlled by ‘ndrine.

An ‘Ndrangheta pentito, Giorgio Basile, has been doing his damnedest to assist the authorities in any way he can. I don’t care what anyone thinks about Cosa Nostra or ‘Ndrangheta, love ‘em or hate ‘em, a snitch is a snitch is a snitch – the lowest most dishonest and dishonorable scum to exist. Basile is that sorta dude. He once belonged to the Carelli ‘ndrine in Corigliano Calabro, and was arrested in southern Germany in 1997. When questioned by the Bavarian state Office of Criminal Investigation, Basile admitted to taking part in more than 30 murders. In return for identifying many fellow ‘ndranghetisti in Germany, he was accepted into the Italian witness protection program. His testimony in Italy helped put more than 50 ‘ndranghetisti behind bars, but most of his former accomplices in Germany have remained at-large to this day. Basile is a very rare breed within ‘Ndrangheta. Snitches are extremely rare, more so than in Cosa Nostra. Moreover, there has never been a single high-ranking ‘ndranghetista turn pentito. Never. This plays a big part in the difficulty prosecutors have. It’s also what fascinates me. How does the group inspire such loyalty, almost unheard of elsewhere in the world.

Basile most recently testified in Germany against an alleged ‘Ndrangheta drug trafficker. Basile was the prosecutions star witness, and gave a video testimony from a secret location. The big point to be taken from the Basile case, and his testimony in other cases, is that it highlights just how incompetent is the intelligence of German investigators as it pertains to the ‘Ndrangheta: The judges were unfamiliar with the name of Basile’s ‘ndrine – didn’t even understand that it represented a collective rather than a conventional family. Furthermore, prosecutors didn’t bother to contact their Italian counterparts for information on the ‘Ndrangheta. Moreover, when the district court in Duisburg convicted Basile of one of the many murders, the judges wrote that he was apparently a member of a criminal organization known as the "Trangeda." They were referring, erroneously, to the 'Ndrangheta. What a cluster fuck!

Following the capture of Bernardo Provenzano 17 months ago, and his partner Salvatore Riina several years ago, anti-Mafia investigations have revealed to Italian prosecutors the extent of migration of Sicilian Mafiosi. Germany is a popular destination for Sicilian Mafiosi as well as for Calabrian ‘ndranghetisti. According to the BKA, Riina and Provenzano were "in Germany on several occasions." In fact it has been rumored that, when Provenzano's wife returned to his hometown of Corleone in 1993, the Provenzano children were more fluent in German than Italian. Not for nothing though, they also speak fucking good English & French.

Numerous 'ndranghetisti have put down roots in Germany, working as innkeepers, pizzeria owners and hoteliers, especially in the industrial Ruhr region. German investigators have had detailed knowledge -- from Italian sources -- of the 'Ndrangheta's close ties to Duisburg since at least 2000. Virtually all members of the old ‘ndrine from San Luca, and nearby Locri, who have moved to the Ruhr region in recent decades are on record. According to the Italian authorities, “Duisburg has long served as a washing machine for dirty money” from the drug and weapons trades. Sebastiano Strangio, the owner of Da Bruno restaurant, was one of the men murdered in Duisburg last week. He came to Germany from Locri in 1987. His name first surfaced in a 1998 German investigation into a murder in Borgia, when investigators discovered Strangio's number stored in the victim's mobile phone. He was detained for a short time in October 2005 in Amsterdam, where he was charged with cocaine trafficking. Yet – and this comes as no surprise to anyone who has spent time around Sicilian or Calabrian uomini d’onore – Strangio's unsuspecting German neighbors remembered him as the friendly Italian from next door, as helpful as he was charming. He called all women "bella signora" and used to wink at them. He and his associates "were only noticeable because of the nice clothes they wore," says a former neighbor.

No one believes that the hail of bullets that killed the six men last week marks the end of the vendetta. Gianni Venturi, the father of the murdered restaurant trainee, has called his sons death “senseless." He had spent that afternoon picking up a silver ring that he had planned to give to his son for his 18th birthday. But his son was murdered shortly after 2 am & his father never had the chance. Venturi has said that he plans to place the ring on his dead son's finger as soon as the forensic pathologists release the body. Will there be revenge? Gianni Venturi, as eloquent as he is bitter, has been silent when asked the question.

Wolfgang Gatzke, head of the state Office of Criminal Investigation in Düsseldorf, fears that there could be "acts of revenge on German soil." With the help of BKA agents and Italian investigators, Gatzke's team is trying to figure out which Italians in the area belong to which ‘ndrine – in other words, which of them could use police protection. Their goal is to save lives – civilian or ‘ndranghetista.

By the end of last week, hundreds of bouquets had already been placed on the pavement in front of the Da Bruno restaurant. When a young man added two gerbera daisies to the pile, he murmured: "It isn't over yet."

A wax sculpture of two black fists holding a rolled cigarette had also been placed with the flowers in front of the restaurant. An unaccustomed sight in Germany, the cigarette is frequently seen at Mafia funerals in Italy. It is a sign of respect from the members of the family – ‘ndrina or cosca, it’s a common symbolism throughout the world of the Italian Mafia. The cigarette is an ominous sign for the streets of Duisburg: it signifies that the deceased will not lack for anything in the afterworld.

It also symbolizes the revenge that will be taken in this life.

When they dance the Tarantella at San Luca this September the battle lines will have already been drawn, the first steps to revenge will have already been taken. All the roadblocks in the world have no impact. The underground tunnels connecting the towns and villages of the Aspromonte are well maintained and Carabinieri Alfa Romeo’s don’t stand in the way down there. And if the vendetta continues to be timed in accordance with religious festivals this could be the most symbolic tarantella ever danced. But that would be too easy, too obvious, and it’s exactly what the authorities expect.

Sicilian or Calabrian, the ferrigno duro is much more fucking brilliant than that. They may have been forgotten by God and by man alike; but they refuse to be ignored by either.

On yet another fieldwork trip to Sicily last winter I was introduced to ‘Ndrangheta. Having worked on research into the life in the Sicilian Mafia for some years now I have developed extraordinarily strong relationships with my research subjects. When I returned to Palermo last winter it was to spend my winter hols with these men and their families.

Since I started this little journal I haven’t bothered posting much about ‘Ndrangheta. There are a few reasons for this: no one was particularly interested in them (HBO are yet to make a series about them so Americans could care less); I’ve only been dealing with them for slightly under a year & hadn’t felt prepared to post about it online (especially when no one was all that interested); it’s only this summer that my ‘Ndrangheta relationships began to feel well established; and, finally, they’re the only research subjects who have ever attempted (and, I might add, succeeded) to scare the hell outta me…and I’m not easily scared when I’m in the field.

After the time I spent in Calabria this summer I felt ready to write about ‘Ndrangheta so I started working on a short introductory post. It’s been eclipsed somewhat by the fallout from the Duisburg killings & I’m working on changing the piece before I post it. Nonetheless, here’s the first of two posts about my ‘Ndrangheta relationships. I’m not gonna write anything substantial about these men, but I’m happy to post snippets of what I’ve experienced because right now I have no interest in publishing papers about the fieldwork I have done in Calabria. Firstly, ‘Ndrangheta is suddenly too sexy and I refuse to exoticize and make a spectacle of what I believe is a theoretically important examination of social life in the Mezzogiorno. Secondly, I have decided that it would be more prudent for me to wait until those involved are long gone – my life is more important to me than publishing an exotic, au courant, journal article in which I am forced to change so many facts that the theoretical framework is shifted and the entire analysis becomes, at best, second rate.

I came to be given the nickname Zecchinetta on my first crossing of the Straits of Messina from Sicily to Calabria. For those of you who are not au fait with uncommon card games and illegal gambling, here’s a quick primer on the etymology of the nickname. Zecchinetta was one of the most popular card games played aboard Maltese corsair ships. A game of chance, which was ultimately banned in Italy, Zecchinetta was once described as “a vicious game.” The name can be traced back to the Lanzichenecchi, the German mercenaries of Charles V who, in 1527, ransacked Rome. The game was an overnight success, due to its simplicity: The banker states what he is betting, and any player can offer to match this. The banker deals one card to himself and another to his opponent. He continues dealing cards in this order (him-opponent-him-opponent…you get it, super-simple). The winner is the first player to receive a card of the same value as the first card dealt.¹

The analogy to my research activities is plain to see; my research is, after all, a game of chance, which depends upon someone demanding that I act in a trustworthy way toward them, and that I don’t reveal their identity; in return I ask that they tell me about their life, and that they act in a trustworthy way by not setting me up for physical assault. It’s a weighted relationship, there is no equality, they are banker, I am player; they hold all the fucking cards and it’s up to them how the deck is stacked. If they abuse the trust I place in them I have no recourse. The banker controls all in the game of zecchinetta – he can, after all, arrange to deal to himself the winning card. My subjects, as banker, control everything I do in Italy, my freedom, my safe passage; my life is in their hands. I can never afford to doubt that fact. In return they have given me more research data than I could have ever hoped for.

It began one afternoon as I left my residence in the La Kalsa section of Palermo for a late-lunch meeting in Brancaccio – a neighborhood where I was spending much of my time, a neighborhood blighted by poverty, hopelessness, and where it almost seems that life itself can be sustained by the bonds of trust and honor alone. I didn’t make it to Brancaccio that day – as I walked to the bus terminal my phone rang he man on the other end of the phone was a subject I refer to as ‘Paolo’ – a subject who has become a close friend and confidante in this frequently bizarre life into which my research has pushed me. Paolo was one of my first Palermitan subjects; he is fluent in English, Italian, and Sicilian, as well as a few other languages. Moreover, he understands the purpose, integrity, and importance of academic research. Paolo is indispensable to my work in Italy, and regardless of that, we will remain lifelong friends after the work is finished.

Paolo instructed me to cancel my plans for the day and meet him for a drive out of town, to the Castelvetrano area. We met up at a popular coffee shop in a swish Palermitan neighborhood around Viale della Libertà. We left the city westbound, and then drove south to Castelvetrano. Just outside the Castelvetrano city limits we pulled into a service station car park and walked to a nearby cafeteria. I assumed that we were meeting with members of his cosca; Paolo had told me nothing on the way there, which was unusual for him as he generally primes me as to who we will meet, what their status is, what they know about me, who has vouched for me, how I should act and what I can expect.

I had nurtured a growing interest in ‘Ndrangheta for a year or so at that point (which I had mentioned to Paolo several months beforehand) – trying to get a fieldwork contact in Calabria was in the top 3 items of my fieldwork to-do list. But these types of contacts aren’t exactly easy to come by: As friends in Italy have joked when asking me how I got involved with this stuff – it’s not like you can look up a Mafia boss in the White Pages, ring him up and tell him what you do and that you want his life story and access to all his underlings.

Being female is another complication and this complication is something I prefer to deny: Whilst my gender allows me to pass undetected or unsuspected under certain circumstances, it also puts me at greater risk inasmuch as I am immediately presumed to be wholly defenseless. And, fair enough, I really am, very much so. Male researchers attempting to perform ethnographic research within the environment of any secret, underground, violent, criminal male social unit must accept the ever-present threat of physical violence. Female ethnographers must contend with the same, and must also accept the very real potential for violent sexual assault. Only a woman can understand the gripping fear induced by that awareness. That’s why the few of us who do this type of work just deal by ignoring the potential risk. Yeah, you have to have a screw loose to do this shit. If you’re female, however, it’s of great help to be more than slightly off kilter.

The men who Paolo introduced me to that day in Castelvetrano are from Calabria. They are ‘Ndrangheta clan members. They are not from the town of San Luca (of Duisburg infamy). I was introduced to everyone – some of them gave me fake names, some gave me no name, I gave my real name – same as always. The Calabrian’s were clearly very well versed in my resume, not the professional or academic one so much as my personal background – who I am, how and where my childhood was spent, how I became known to my NYC subjects, how I was introduced to the Sicilians, what I was interested in (particularly my lack of interest in criminal activities), how my integrity has been tested over the past few years and – most particularly – the fact that I am very strongly aware of the repercussions if I were to act in a dishonorable way toward my subjects: At the end of the day, when one is a civilian playing with this fire, all it comes down to is this – you expose identities, you die. No drama intended, just plain and simple fact. It’s as black and white as a choice can be. There’s no honor about it when you’re not an initiated member, there’s no expectation of loyalty, there can’t be. But life or death, well, even for someone as notoriously indecisive as myself it’s fucking obvious how to act.

The late afternoon and early evening was spent with the Calabrian’s studying me, my every word, my every movement, my every facial expression. At the end of the meeting Paolo and I returned to Palermo. Dropping me off in La Kalsa, a few blocks from my residence, he told me to meet him in Capo market the following morning at 7 am, to bring my passport and to leave my camera at home.

The next morning, when I met Paolo at Capo there was no messing around, no stopping for espresso and Nutella-stuffed croissants, no picking up fruit or bread and cheese in Capo, as we usually did. Paolo hustled me to where his car was parked, alongside another in which sat two other subjects I know from Paolo’s cosca. We were on our way, within minutes we were driving along the highway to Catania. We met up with one of the Calabrian chaps, ‘Cesco,’ at a bar. There was sufficient time to throw back a quick espresso, and then we were on our way out of town, headed north again toward Messina. Stopping in Catania seemed to me to have been a long detour to make, and when I later asked Paolo about this he indulged me with a lengthy explanation. But the detour was beautiful, and in the space of half a morning I was treated to almost every type of vista that the island offers.

Just outside of Messina we pulled off the road, in the suburb of Mili Marina, and made our way to a rather average looking boat, which made me nervous – the winter sea didn’t look too welcoming. This average looking boat turned out to be bloody fast though, but that could just be my lack of maritime experience.

At this point I was shitting myself. I assumed – correctly as it would turn out – that we on our way to Calabria. Did this mean that I was ‘in,’ so to speak – did it mean that Paolo had connected me to some ‘Ndrangheta subjects…? Or was it gonna turn out to be a really really bad day for my family? Between the rough seas and my rising fear I began to feel extremely weak and nauseated. Everything was ok; after disembarking in the town of Annà I was guided through the area surrounding the town of Bagaladi, in the Aspromonte region. I spent two days being shown around the area, meeting with the ‘Ndrangheta partners of Paolo’s Palermitan cosca. The Aspromonte park is a breathtakingly beautiful area and has topological attributes similar to those of western and central Sicily, structural characteristics that have long served to hide and shelter those who prefer to remain hidden. Aspromonte is without a doubt one of the most stunning places I have ever visited.

On the boat ride back to Sicily it was a Calabrian, ‘Teddu,’ who first called me ‘Zecchinetta.’ Most of my subjects have given me nicknames – it’s a basic cultural norm in tightly bound groups, criminal or non-criminal. ‘Teddu’ is of ‘Ndrangheta, his entire family is of ‘Ndrangheta, as is his wife’s family, and his sons will follow in his footsteps. When his daughter marries it will be to a man who is of ‘Ndrangheta.

‘Teddu’ threw the nickname ‘Zecchinetta’ out there in a joke that I couldn’t quite understand, as Paolo and I talked about Sciascia, as we crossed the Straits of Messina (the body of water between Sicily and Calabria). Others aboard the boat laughed uproariously, and began calling me by the name. I thought it was cute, I thought that getting a cool nickname meant that I was ‘in.’ I was thinking about Sciascia’s Day of the Owl characters. I was trying to figure out the reference, a bit puzzled.

Paolo explained that there is a card game called Zecchinetta. Simplistically I thought that ‘Teddu’ had been referring to the gutsy game of chance I played with my research. I thought the laughter from the other men was approval, that it might connote a small degree of respect. Nickname references are never what they seem in this game though. They weren’t declaring respect, they weren’t declaring approval, nor were they saying a damned thing that could be taken as any such thing. They weren’t even referring to me with the nickname, but to themselves. Respect? No way, it was more like they were expressing the sort of amusement one feels toward someone who acts in a completely incomprehensible manner.

There was a dark side to it, a very dark side. My nickname is double-edged: just as the reference alludes to my being accepted as a player in someone else’s game, so too is it a warning, a constant reminder of who is really in charge and how arbitrarily the game I’m playing can be changed by the banker. In calling me Zecchinetta they were clearly stating that I was allowed to play according to the capricious whim of another.

That I was given a nickname, any nickname, says only that these men acknowledged my existence as a living, breathing human being; and that, as long as I’m in the field, it’s all up to them. They can allow, or they can disallow. That’s all. But, all in all it’s no big deal when the game is played according to such easy, such well defined, rules.

Zecchinetta, it’s the perfect fucking soprannome.

References:
¹ Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary. London. 1970. p. 186-211)

The Vatican has been extreme in its condemnation of arsonists this summer. One bishop, speaking on Vatican radio, described setting fire to a wood as "an infamous crime" for which the perpetrator should be excommunicated and "pursued with the same intensity with which the church attack those who destroy life in a mother's womb". From a pulpit in Palermo, a priest cursed the pyromaniacs for their "abominable and devastating wickedness" and demanded harsher legal penalties against them.

Newspapers are reporting that Mezzogiorno farmers feel sympathy for farmers in the U.K., who are losing herds of livestock as the British countryside is in the midst of another outbreak of foot and mouth disease. But, as the Italian press is quick to point out, foot and mouth disease kills only animals, not people, whereas several people have already died in Italy's forest fires. The latest victim, a 21-year-old soldier, burned to death last week while helping to put out a fire near Cosenza in Calabria during four days' home leave from his military barracks in Florence.

Scanio claims that the fires are mostly caused by criminals – either as part of gang warfare or set on behalf of property developers seeking to clear land for housing. The latter is a familiar story in the Mezzogiorno because, in this region, when woodland has been destroyed permission to build is often more easily obtainable, especially when local officials are corrupt as they so often are in this part of the world.

Ten days ago the 57-year-old Klaus Lichtenberg was caught setting fire to some woodland near Cosenza. It doesn't sound likely that a Calabrian gang would hire an elderly German citizen to do its dirty work for it. But then no one thought that 6 members of the ‘Ndrangheta would be corralled and murdered in Duisburg, Germany, as happened yesterday afternoon. Lichtenberg, it is alleged, just set the fire for the hell of it. Or maybe it’s payback for the beach towels of Germans being burned on Italian beaches earlier in the season. Although, to be fair, Germans with a beach towel are a 5 am menace well known to anyone who’s spent much time holidaying in Europe and it’s not like the Italian farmers snuck out at 5 am to lay out their land in the bestest spot on the hillside now, is it?!

It's clear that some people start forest fires simply for the thrill of it – we’ve seen that here, in Greece, and in the U.S., so far this summer. To cause such vast destruction with one strike of a match, to bring out teams of fire fighters in helicopters and trucks, not to mention national guardsmen and soldiers, and to watch them battling in vain against the flames; all these things must give the lowly arsonist a heady sense of power.

And the thing with arson is that, unless you are crazy enough to commit it in public, it is a crime that almost always escapes detection. Unlike rolling out a beach towel at 5 am, that you plan upon sprawling on until the sun goes down…

This image, captured by the ‘Aqua’ satellite on July 22, 2007, shows multiple fires across southern Europe. The red dots show the locations of the fires - the black lines denote country borders. Smoke drifts over the Ionian Sea, and the fires are visible throughout Italy, Greece, Albania, Croatia, Bosnia, and other nearby countries. The fires have been causing evacuations and destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. According to the Associated Press, the wildfires have even caused shells from past wars to explode, from WWI in Macedonia, and from WWII and The Greek Civil War of the 1940s, in Greece.

As City of London police investigators were helping Italian investigators assemble evidence to convict those associated with Calvi's murder, they were also following leads to trace where any money linked to the bank might have ended up. It emerged that about £45 million associated with Banco Ambrosiano was found in the Bahamas three years ago. It was recently established, however, that the amount located in the Bahamas is significantly higher than that.

In fact, hundreds of millions of pounds linked to the collapse of the Italian bank at the centre of the murder of Roberto Calvi have been found in the Bahamas. Calvi, known as "God's Banker" because of his links to the Vatican, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London twenty-five years ago. It initially appeared to be a suicide. Forensics, however, showed that Calvi had been suicided, so to speak – murder that was made to appear as if it were suicide.

To date, there has been no conclusive evidence to convict anyone of the crime. Investigators say that the money involved has been traced to offshore Bahamian accounts…and finding that dough is a significant breakthrough in one of the most mysterious murders and financial crimes of modern history. Police sources in London indicate that the authorities in the Bahamas have been slow in supplying them with details associated with the accounts. Well, that’s hardly a surprise. It’s understood that the situation has prompted the intervention of the UK's Foreign Office.

When Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982, £800m went missing. The Milanese bank had close ties with the Catholic Church, the secret Masonic sect known as Propaganda Due (P2), and the Sicilian Mafia. Calvi, the Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, created a web of offshore accounts that were employed to hide the bank's activities, and its losses.

Calvi was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge, in central London, with a length of orange rope woven into a lover's knot around his neck. His body was weighed down with bricks, and his pockets were stuffed with £15,000 in cash. In a decision that was ridiculed at the time, the Metropolitan Police in London concluded that Calvi's cause of death was suicide.

An inquest in London initially ruled his death was suicide, but, after a High Court challenge by his family, a second inquest was held and an open verdict was recorded. In 2003, Italian prosecutors concluded Calvi had been killed, and in October 2005 four men and a woman went on trial for murder. Prosecutors claimed one of the five, Giuseppe "Pippo" Calo, had ordered the killing. Calo, dubbed "Cosa Nostra's cashier" by the Italian media for his alleged laundering of mob money, has been in jail since the 1980s on Mafia charges unconnected to the Calvi claims.

The other defendants were Silvano Vittor, Calvi's driver and bodyguard; Ernesto Diotallevi and Flavio Carboni, both businessmen; and Manuela Kleinszig, Carboni's Austrian ex-girlfriend. Prosecutors had asked for Kleinszig to be acquitted because of insufficient evidence, and for life sentences for the other four defendants. The defense cited the initial assessment by British forensic experts that Calvi had killed himself to argue that the five had nothing to do with his death.

On June 6th 2007, after a 20-month trial in Rome, the five were cleared of murdering Calvi. Trial prosecutor Luca Tescaroli has received death threats. None of the defendants was in the high-security courtroom on the outskirts of the Italian capital when the judge read the verdicts, reached after a day and a half of deliberation.

New York-born investigator Jeff Katz, who was hired by the banker's family in 1991 to look into his death, said: "I don't think that this verdict changes the fact that he was murdered; it's just saying that these were not the people responsible." Katz spent three years on the case, reconstructing the circumstances of Calvi's death and uncovering evidence he could not have committed suicide. He showed that Calvi's shoes would have had flecks of rust and paint from the scaffolding below Blackfriars Bridge if he had shimmied there by himself, but police analysis found they did not.

It was alleged Calvi had been laundering money for the Mafia, and that mob bosses feared he would betray them after his Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in one of Italy's biggest fraud scandals. It went bust at the time of Calvi's death, following the disappearance of £670 million in loans the bank had provided to dummy companies in Latin America. The Mafia has long-claimed that Calvi’s murder was actually linked to his involvement in the provision of Exocet missiles to Argentina – missiles that were fired at British Royal Navy ships the day of his murder in London.

Untold damage was done to the prestige of the Catholic Church by the spectacular collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. Vatican Bank was the Milan-based Ambrosiano's main shareholder. On 5 June 1982, two weeks before he died, Calvi wrote to Pope John Paul II, giving warning that the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano would 'provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage'.

As well as losing the Church £400 million, the failure caused a number of senior Vatican figures to spend the rest of their careers under a shadow. Among them was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was in charge of the Vatican Bank at the time. Marcinkus implicated the Church in issuing "letters of patronage" vouching for companies used by Calvi to siphon off money from Banco Ambrosiano. In 1984, the Vatican agreed to make a £120 million goodwill payment to creditors of Banco Ambrosiano, whilst still denying any responsibility for its fraudulent collapse. Marcinkus was the subject of an arrest warrant by Italian magistrates in 1987, but spent the rest of his career as an assistant parish priest in Sun City, Arizona, until his death last year.

Many of those in positions to have had pertinent information about Banco Ambrosiano are now dead – Calvi. Soisson, and Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I) all met with untimely deaths. So, finding the Calvi millions might just lead to solving a whole lot more than a bit of basic skimming and money laundering.