His resistance to various extortion attempts earned him threats and damage to his property and crops, until a dawn visit by a dozen individuals led by a gunman to his tomato fields forced him to agree to pay. €150,000 ($158,000) a year.
But the next day, instead of paying, he went to the police, becoming one of the few victims who dared to denounce the Mafia in the city of Foggia.
Thus, he confronted a criminal organization that has known how to remain in the shadows for a long time, despite being the most violent on the peninsula.
“If the inhabitants were more involved, the local mafia would be weakened. For 40 years, the Foggia mafia has carried on its activities unmolested, although in the last 6 or 7 years it has suffered several setbacks,” he told AFP. Lazzaro D’Auria, who has lived under police protection since 2017.
“Inhabitants of Foggia, make your complaints!” implores the 57-year-old businessman, who sees the recent police raids as a positive sign and is convinced that the mafia can be fought if the inhabitants manage to overcome their fears. .
The authorities were slow to take seriously this “fourth mafia” (the other three being Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Camorra in Naples), long considered a marginal rural phenomenon for its bloody feuds between clans. .
But the young Italian criminal organization already had the large province of Foggia under control, with drug trafficking activities, armed robberies and car robberies and extortion.
“It is a rudimentary, primitive mafia. Very violent and very aggressive”, explained Ludovico Vaccaro, prosecutor of Foggia.
While the largest mafias have abandoned violent actions and turned to less visible and more profitable activities, even within the legal economy, Foggia’s is in its first phase.
– They kill each other –
“Today, the mafias have evolved, they fire fewer shots, they follow a more discreet strategy in order to go unnoticed,” says Vaccaro.
“This mafia, on the other hand, still shoots and kills to confirm its power in the territory,” he adds.
The term “Foggia Mafia” encompasses several groups that operate in different sectors of crime.
Stretching from the Gargagno promontory overlooking the Adriatic to the agricultural plains inland, the province of Foggia ranks third on the list of homicides in Italy. Five of the 16 murders committed in the last year are related to the mafia.
The “battalions”, made up of members with family ties, divide up geographical areas and often cooperate and share the proceeds of extortion to support their members and their prisoners.
“When conflicts arise over the distribution of illicit profits (…) the battalions clash and kill each other,” says a Foggia police officer, Mario Grassia.
Each group has its specialty, from the armed robbery of cargo trucks to arson and attacks on storefronts or company vehicles, to persuade owners of the need to pay.
Farmers like D’Auria often find that their olive trees have been cut down, their crops burned or their cattle stolen.
On the shores of the Gargano, where both tourists from half of Europe and drug shipments from Albania disembark, the mafia is especially brutal.
Four years ago, a human skull was placed in front of a municipal building to send a message to the mayor of Monte Sant’Angelo.
A goat’s head pierced by a dagger was sent the same year to the lawyer for the mother of a missing mob victim.
According to investigators, the Gargano mafia is known to shoot victims in the face and leave the bodies in underground caves.
– No one speaks, sees or listens –
During police patrols in Foggia, the AFP was able to see the traces of multiple crimes that have terrified the population in recent years.
Among them, the place where the construction businessman Giovanni Panunzio was shot dead in 1992 for being the first to publicly denounce the mafia.
Reporters also toured the abandoned farm where police foiled an attack on a businessman in 2022 and saw the cafe whose owner was stabbed to death in the eye during a robbery in 2020.
“Currently there is no war between mafias, only reckoning,” said a police officer on condition of anonymity.
In November, Nicola Di Rienzo, 21, was shot five times in a public park. His 17-year-old murderer turned herself in a few hours laterbut “he didn’t speak, he didn’t see, he didn’t hear anything,” the agent said.
Officer Mario Grassia is concerned about the three murders committed by minors in 2022, in a context of increasing juvenile delinquency.
“Those who are part of these adolescent gangs have family ties to people close to organized crime,” he observes.
Another issue of concern is the presence of the mafia in public institutions. The Foggia mayor’s office was dissolved in 2021 due to mafia infiltration and its mayor was arrested for corruption. Four other municipalities have been dissolved since 2015.
– Fear spreads –
In recent years, several drug lords have been jailed and the authorities are trying to regain control of the territory, although there is still a lot of work to be done.
The Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, visited Foggia in February and promised to strengthen security, in particular by installing remote surveillance cameras.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, more police and courts are needed to combat “the climate of fear and intimidation as well as socio-cultural poverty.”
The province has only one court, with 12,000 criminal cases awaiting trial. “In this vast territory, if the state does not control the situation, the criminals will,” warns Vaccaro.
In the middle of last year, D’Auria’s grain fields were set on fire, as were three of his tractors. And his bank has halved his credit lines because he considers him a “high risk” client.
Still, he sees glimmers of hope in the recent arrests and convictions, as they show the state has finally moved against the mob. “I feel much safer than before, but the fear is still there,” he confessed.
