The idea is to inhibit access to tax bonuses for building contractors who accept to pay extortion rackets and do not report as they are complicit with the Mafia.
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Although there are still entrepreneurs who continue to pay, today the choice to oppose paying the pizzo is possible and does not even need mediatic clamor.
Thanks to the work of magistrates and law enforcement and with the help of supportive social networks, over the last two decades hundreds of extortions have been reported in Palermo. Many shopkeepers and entrepreneurs rebelled against Cosa Nostra and after the trial continued their economic activity under normal conditions.
However, it should be noted that, especially in some areas of the city and in specific sectors, there are entrepreneurs who pay protection money and do not report it. The narrative about the ‘pizzo’ needs to be updated.
Today, unlike in the past, many of those who pay the pizzo do it for connivance, rather than for fear and sense of isolation.
n several cases, it is evident a relationship of complicity between those who pay pizzo without hesitation and the organized crime. Some entrepreneurs ask and receive ‘services’ from the Mafia in exchange for the protection money paid, for instance to undermine their competitors, or to recover a debt and stolen goods, or to settle disputes with their employees. Some of them pay pizzo and do not report because they are themselves members of Cosa Nostra or because the protection money is paid to their own cousin or son-in-law.
It is a degenerative variant of the pizzo phenomenon which has always existed. However, compared to the past, in some areas of Palermo it has become dominant. This relationship between the business and the Mafia causes damage to the community and seriously overexposes the real victims of the extortion rackets who report the demands to the police.
In this scenario, it would be appropriate to enact rules and laws to make such relationships of connivance unfavourable. In particular in the construction sector,which in recent years has benefited from investments worth billions of euros as tax bonuses to get the country’s economy back on track.
We want to address the Government and Parliament as we believe the time has come for the adoption of rules that prevent access to these bonuses to those companies that pay the pizzo and do not report, when it is evident that they are conniving with Cosa Nostra.
This type of administrative instrument would discourage relationships of conniving acquiescence that alter the market and the free competition to the detriment of honest entrepreneurs and final consumers.
PRESS
Addiopizzo: «Si vietino bonus fiscali a imprenditori che pagano il racket»
L’iniziativa. Pizzo e imprenditori conniventi. «Chiediamo lo stop ai bonus fiscali»
Estorsioni, la proposta di Addiopizzo: “Niente bonus fiscali per chi paga il pizzo e non denuncia”
