Italy seizes assets worth €100m from mafia-linked entrepreneur

Police in Naples on Thursday seized assets worth more than 100 million euros (136 million U.S. dollars) from a local entrepreneur allegedly linked to a mafia clan, media reports said.
The entrepreneur, Alfonso Letizia, was defined by investigators as a "reference point" for the Casalesi clan, one of the most powerful groups within the Naples-based Camorra criminal organization.
Letizia's industrial group, which produced and sold concrete, was suspected to be "at the disposal" of the Casalesi clan, which in return was granting the entrepreneur a monopolistic market in the area, ANSA news agency said.
"The operation was very complex and precise," head of the Italian anti-mafia DIA unit Arturo De Felice told Rai state television.
As many as 81 plots of land and buildings, 29 cars and motorbikes, seven companies and dozens of bank accounts were among the seized assets, he said.
The 67-year-old entrepreneur had over time built an industrial empire, also engaging his sons and taking advantage of his relations with the Camorra to accumulate wealth, according to local reports.
Italian mafias have traditionally been engaged in a variety of criminal activities, but over the past few years they have increasingly invested their profits in the legal economy, often covered up by unlawful transactions and political connections.
Recent investigations have uncovered dozens of mafia-owned businesses in Italy's big cities, ringing the alarm bell that the clans have turned their hands to the power centers of Italy.