You may have thought that the mafia culture in Italy was a thing of the past, or something mythologized in America through films such as the Godfather, or more recently the television series The Sopranos.
But the Calabrian version of the mafia, the ‘ndrangheta, is showing just how to hoodwink a government.
Recently processes have been underway to discover how, on the 16th of January this year, 13 million euro went missing from the Ministry of State Schooling, destined as a bonus for families.
The first stop on the trail of the money was in the accounts of a company purportedly to have a bar in Bologna’s city centre.
Unfortunately though, the bar doesn’t exist and neither does the company, and the account was opened with false documents.
With Interpol and a special branch of the Italian police on the scent, the fake account took them to Cairo, Egypt and a company called “Egyptians for Investments and Tourism”.
Waiting for the right move, they managed to engender a withdrawal of 50,000 euro and so freeze the account.