ROME. In a move that would make even the most hardened of consiglieres weep into their espresso, Italian authorities have pried the cold, dead fingers of a Mafia boss off his ill-gotten gains. The late don, whose name is now mud but whose wallet was once bulging, has had his portfolio of villas, cars, and cash seized by the state. The haul includes everything from a Tuscan vineyard (perfect for laundering blood money into Chianti) to a fleet of Alfa Romeos that were probably used for drive-by espressos.
Let us pause and consider the sheer bureaucratic chutzpah required to confiscate wealth from a corpse. The dead don, let's call him Salvatore 'The Stringer' Something-or-other, thought he could take his millions to the grave. But the taxman is the one ghost that even a made man can't whack. The villas, with their terraces overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, are now the property of the Italian people. Or more likely, they'll be auctioned off to some oligarch who'll turn them into a theme park called 'Mafia World'.
The cars: a collection of gleaming, black, tinted-windowed sedans that scream 'I'm a crime boss and I'm late for a meeting with my accountant.' They'll probably end up in a government motor pool, driven by some poor civil servant who has to fill out a form in triplicate to take them for an MOT.
And the cash. Oh, the cash. Stacks of euros so high they could be used as a bribery ladder to heaven. But now it's going to the coffers of the state. Will it be spent on schools? Hospitals? Perhaps on a new wing at the Uffizi dedicated entirely to paintings of disgraced politicians. We can only dream.
The real question is: why did it take so long? The Mafia has been operating like a franchise of malevolent pizza joints for decades. Everyone knows who the bosses are. They're the ones with the gold chains and the permanent sneer. But the Italian justice system moves with the speed of a glacier in a snowstorm. It's only when the dons are dead that the state finds its courage. Perhaps because the chances of a corpse sending a horse's head to the minister of justice are slim.
In the end, this seizure is a victory for the little guy. The peasant who's been paying protection money to a man who's been dead for six months. The shopkeeper who thought the don's ghost was still running the rackets. Now they can sleep easy, knowing that the state has finally stepped in. But let's not get too carried away. There are plenty more where Salvatore came from. The Mafia is like a hydra: cut off one head and two more grow back, each with a better accountant.
So raise a glass of grappa to the fallen don. May he rest in pieces, and may his loot fund a few more traffic wardens. And if you see a government car with tinted windows, give it a wide berth. It might just be the taxman on the prowl.
