Italian carabinieri have discovered that a Calabrian 'Ndrangheta clan had been running a migrant center for unaccompanied minors and had been acting 'above the law'. The members of the organized crime had received significant funding from the interior ministry but had failed to provide adequate facilities and services to young migrants.
For two years, the Farao Matricola clan of the Calabria-based mafia organization the 'Ndrangheta ran and made money off a 150-bed migrant center for unaccompanied minors. The center, called Casa Sant'Antonio, was fully controlled by the illegal organization and was used by it for high-level meetings between its members. Every aspect was under the control of the mafia-type group: all the supplies, clothing and food were from companies linked to the clan, which saw their profits rise suddenly and inexorably.
'Above the law'
Despite the large amount of funds provided by the Interior ministry to ensure adequate services and facilities for the guests, the center was in dire conditions. The security forces ascertained the state of the facilities after complaints from foreign minors staying there about tensions over lack of food.
Inside the walls of Casa Sant'Antonio, the men from the clan acted above the law to the extent that they attacked and threatened a juvenile court judge. In October 2014, a justice of the peace from the Court for Minors visited the facilities for a hearing of the minors staying there. The procedure went as planned until the judge asked the center's staff and managers to leave the room so that they could question each of the guests alone (starting from a 16-year-old teenage mother). At that moment, a man from the clan in the facilities reacted violently, forcing the judge to leave in order to prevent the situation from worsening.
Complicity of Neapolitan businessman
The investigation found that the Neapolitan entrepreneur Aniello Esposito played a central role in the Farao clan's entrance into the 'migrant business'. The entrepreneur had already been managing two migrant centers in Afragola, in the Campania region. The anti-mafia unit of Catanzaro has accused him of collusion with the mafia. Esposito allegedly made available to the clan ''his political and administrative links both in Calabria and in Rome, without which the clan would not have been able to activate the migrant reception center and, above all, receive enormous amounts of public funds and coverage of claimed management costs''.