The regional daily reports that “A Monaco resident, partner of an entrepreneur linked to the Calabrian mafia, was arrested on Sunday at Nice airport by the judicial police. This woman had flown from Dubai. She was presented this afternoon (yesterday) to the public prosecutor’s office in Aix-en-Provence. Under a European arrest warrant, Chiara Rizzio, 43, should be quickly extradited to Italy.”
In fact, the situation is both simpler and… much more complicated!
Chiara Rizzo is the wife of Amadeo Matacena, a Calabrian businessman and former member of parliament for the right-wing party (PLD), sentenced to 5 years in prison for mafia association and went to Dubai to avoid imprisonment.
She resides in Monaco where she is well-known for her participation in the social scene.
The anti-mafia directorate has requested the arrest of Mrs. Rizzo as part of operation “Breakfast” (code name), whose main target is Claudio Scajola, a former parliamentarian, interior and industry minister, “dominus” of the political world in the cross-border department of Imperia for about thirty years.
He is accused of complicity with the Calabrian economic crime that is very present in the territory of the Italian Ponente but also in the Principality of Monaco and on the French Riviera. Other people (collaborators and trusted men of the politician) have also been arrested.
Moreover, the magistrates suspect Claudio Scajola of maintaining close ties with Claudio Matacena and trying to organize his transfer to Lebanon where he could enjoy the protection of the Phalangist circles of the Lebanese right.
The magistrates are said to have documents proving the confidential and financial relationships between the former minister and Chiara Rizzo.
While the judicial proceedings remain within the framework of the investigation, the facts once again shed light on the enormous weight that the Calabrian organized crime (N’drangheta) exerts on the political, economic, and social life of the cross-border territory. Politically, it is the eruption of a volcano that will bury a generation of the ruling class in power for decades.
But, most likely, we are facing a case whose only the first pages have been opened, and which therefore requires a lot of measure and caution in its monitoring and interpretation.
If, as the saying goes, “there is no smoke without fire,” it would be auspicious to wait patiently for, as the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus said, “time puts everything in the light.”
In the meantime, dilettantes should abstain…
