Mafia’s quake contracts

MEMBERS of Italy’s Camorra mafia won contracts to rebuild the quake-hit city of L’Aquila with the help of four bank employees, police charged yesterday after carrying out six arrests.

In an operation codenamed Untouchable, police also seized 21 businesses, 118 buildings and other property worth a total of €100 million, police said.

Those arrested are thought to be involved in the financial operations of the Casalesi clan, one of the Camorra’s most powerful, based in Caserta near Naples. They have ties to the Rome area, northern Tuscany as well as L’Aquila’s Abruzzo region in central Italy.

Phone taps caught the suspects arranging money transfers to finance businesses created in L’Aquila in order to obtain lucrative contracts to rebuild the devastated medieval walled city, police said.

The earthquake in L’Aquila on April 6, 2009, claimed 308 lives.