How the Ndrangheta saved the banks: an analysis by Giovanni Resca, Il Manifesto, pp. A1, A6
OSINT stands for Open Source Intelligence. It refers to the sort of information you can pick up in the public domain just from reading government papers, chamber of commerce records, company balance sheets, newspaper articles, planning permission applications, land rezoning agreements and local news. It is what we journalists used to do all the time, but now we prefer to be spoon-fed, and like fat, coddled toddlers, we accept digestible pap from the corporations and government. But who makes the pap? Someone has to produce it, and make it easily digestible and even tasty for a gullible public. The pap-makers may deserve censure for what they do, but they are today’s true journalists. Often venal, calculating and dishonest, always inventive, they are the great storytellers of our time. First, they plant their memes, their exposes, distractions, half-truths or downright lies, then they build a narrative around them. They are the world’s secret artists.
The trick in OSINT is self-reference. You create a news story that is completely or partially made up, then you circulate it quietly until it is picked up by someone else. You bide your time until it goes viral or simply becomes part of the background noise. The important thing is it must no longer have a single identifiable source. You let the Chinese-whisper effect distort some of the details of the story, then you pick it up again and bring it to prominence attributing it to others. That’s how most of the Iraq WMD stories were created. This is the storytelling skill. But, and this is the mistake that many of us on the Left often make, not all OSINT is false. On the contrary, most of it is true, for otherwise it would not work. The trick is to weave separate threads into a convincing fable. As in advertising and publishing, two other meretricious pursuits, the hardest part of OSINT is making sure that it’s your story and not someone else’s that gets out there.
Borrowing from the OSINT experts, then, I should like to propose my own version of recent economic developments. Using open sources, I have looked at the events since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and drawn some inevitable conclusions. Unlike many of my colleagues, particularly those who work for Berlusconi, I want to make full disclosure at the outset, and say that the reason I am telling this story, which is a true one, is that I want the Ndrangheta to become known. I want to publicize the name. I want the organization to become as notorious and ill-famed as Cosa Nostra. I want to put them in the limelight so that that part of the state they do not yet control might wake up and do battle.
As the readers of this newspaper know, capitalism needs a lot of propping up. It always has. Most of the direct support is through military spending, but capitalism can also rely on the public to provide collateral when things get tough. When billions are being made (but not distributed), the public is told capitalism works; when billions are being lost, the public is told it needs to pay up to rescue capitalism, because only capitalism works.
Sometimes plutocrats dispense with the effort of intellectual justification. They simply back capital accumulation with military force and the constant threat of violence, and kill those who resist. This is how it works in Russia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and most of Italy. We call it the Mafia, but we could just as easily call it deregulation. The only difference is the veneer of legitimacy.
But it is an important difference. For capitalism to appear legitimate, people must keep believing that it works. So when it stopped working, when people realized the banks didn’t trust one another enough to lend, capitalism faced an existential threat. The whole money supply — the whole concept of money itself was on the brink of becoming a story in which no one believed.
In the USA, the Treasury Department introduced quantitative easing. Likewise, in the UK — basically, they printed money, and put off the day of reckoning. In Italy, Berlusconi said the banks were fine, and threw parties in his Sardinian villa. But for a few nights, before the institutions could react, before the trillions were pledged by western governments, there was a risk that ATM machines would stop paying out. Banks needed cash, and they needed it quickly.
Now what sort of organization has a whole load of cash, serious cash, billions upon billions in banknotes — enough to make a difference for a few vital days? The answer comes spontaneously: organized criminals. Specifically, the Russians and the Ndrangheta. There were others, too, but these two had more cash than anyone else. The Ndrangheta needs to burn through its money. Cosa Nostra, an older organization, has interests, contacts, influence, clout and a certain establishment respectability by now, because it has so many non-cash assets. The Ndrangheta is flush with cash. In fact, it has too much, and needs to convert it into capital investments.
The symmetry was perfect. The Ndrangheta has too much liquidity, because it has accumulated cash too fast since the late 1980s. The banks had too little liquidity, and the governments had too little time.
Using open-source intelligence, which means intelligence available to anyone who cares to investigate for himself or herself, I have been able to establish, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the three major British banks and at least two large American banks received enormous deposits in cash during the crucial hours and days of the banking crisis. In exchange, and again, I have listed sources at the end of this article, it was agreed that neither the tax authorities nor anyone else would look too closely at where this money came from. It was the biggest money-laundering operation in history, and it was sanctioned by members of government and the upper echelons of law enforcement. It was a quantum leap for the Ndrangheta. It gave them proper financial power.
Capitalism was saved by blood and drug money to live another day, but we shall pay the consequences of handing enormous financial power to a Mafia organization so disciplined that even its name is unknown to many people in its own country of origin.
But check the facts, look at the evidence. The Ndrangheta is already in control, a virus that has taken over the body politic. As long as we are a useful and unwitting host, we will suffer only slight discomfort, but when this virus is ready to infect stronger hosts, it will kill us and move on.
Magistrate Francesco Fossati powered down his laptop, slid it into his desk drawer, and glanced at his watch. He needed to hurry now if he was to make it home in time for supper with his family.
15
Locri, Calabria
‘Salvatore, how many times do I need to tell you this? Put the white cap on your head when you are in here.’
‘But I’m completely bald, Capo.’
‘That is why I am not making you wear a hairnet, too. Put on the cap and carry that bag of sugar over here while you’re at it. Mind your step, the tiles are treacherous with lemon juice.’
Salvatore, seventy-two years of age, arms as thin as tendrils, his face as dark as a rusty nail, lifted the thirty-pound bag of refined sugar as if it had been filled with feathers, and set it down on the zinc counter beside his boss, Basile. As well as lifting heavy weights for Basile, it was his job to keep the conversation serious and on-topic while Basile feigned disinterest. So, putting the sugar down, he returned to the conversation he had started ten minutes before. ‘It is unthinkable that a sorella d’omerta would spontaneously report to a magistrate like that. Especially her. She has been treated with nothing but the greatest respect, even though she comes from outside.’
‘The things we have lived to see, Salvatore. Personally, I’m not inclined to believe it for one moment.’ Basile swiped his hands together, in what looked like a gesture of finality, a closing of the argument for good, but also happened to be the most efficient way of getting the sugar and starch off his hands. Salvatore waited to see which it was.