ROME: Massimo Carminati and Salvatore Buzzi, leaders of a Mafia-style mob ring that plundered the city coffers of Rome, were convicted on Thursday at the end of one the biggest organised crime trials in the Italian capital.
Carminati, a one-time member of Rome’s notorious far-right Magliana Gang, was handed a 20-year sentence and Buzzi, a convicted murderer, was given 19 years.
The two were among 46 defendants in the so-called “Mafia Capital” trial that began in 2015 and which had became a symbol of corruption in Rome. Italian television broadcast the reading of the verdicts live.
Carminati, who lost an eye in a police shootout in the early 1980s, was accused of infiltrating Rome’s city hall and getting his gang’s hands on lucrative public contracts, including for the running of centres housing immigrants.
The investigation laid bare systemic corruption in the city as politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen hooked up with mobsters to rig public tenders. --REUTERS