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Mafia Can’t Stop ‘Big Thinking’ on Italy Bridge

By Flavia Rotondi and Steve Scherer Feb. 12 (Bloomberg)

Italian mafia clans won’t stop Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from building a bridge linking Sicily to the mainland, Transport Minister Altero Matteoli said in an interview. Matteoli presented the plan to the public today in Messina. Impregilo SpA is the lead general contractor for the 6.3- billion-euro ($8.6 billion) suspension bridge project that is scheduled to be completed by 2017.

“A government must think big,” Matteoli said in his Rome office. “A state like ours can’t refuse to tackle this kind of project for fear of the mafia.” The alleged Canadian-Italian mob boss Vito Rizzuto and four others were accused in 2005 of trying to infiltrate the bidding process on the bridge’s construction. Berlusconi revived the plan to build the bridge when he was elected in 2008. Former Prime Minister Romano Prodi had canceled it because he said there were other public works priorities in the south.

Clans of the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta mafia have repeatedly taken over the construction of the highway between Salerno and Reggio Calabria. Building on the freeway, which will lead south to the bridge, began in 1964. Large tracts remain under construction to this day because of delays and the need to replace stretches built poorly or with shoddy materials. “What will happen, as has happened often, is that the mafia will get its hands on the bridge,” said Luigi Sturniolo, an activist with the “No Bridge Network” in Messina. “That’s what has occurred with all the public works in southern Italy.”

Mob Profit

Italian organized crime boomed as the country’s economy shrank last year, Rome-based anti-racketeering group SOS Impresa said in its annual report last month.

Italy’s main crime groups boosted their profit by 12 percent to more than 78 billion euros ($106 billion), it said. While the government has put forward 1.3 billion euros to build infrastructure on both sides of the bridge, the actual 3.3-kilometer (2-mile) span “will cost the state nothing,” Matteoli said. The company overseeing construction will seek private financing based on future toll fees. “Foreign investors are interested,” Matteoli said. These include Japanese companies, he said, without identifying them.