Corsican mafia: Resolutions are passed by the island assembly to combat the phenomenon
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During an extraordinary session, the Corsican Assembly took a resolution confirming the existence of a mafia drift on the island. Its representative took a set of actions to address the fight against this long-term phenomenon.
On November 18, 2022, the Corsican Assembly, a unique legislative body of Corsica’s territorial collectivity, met in Ajaccio with elected chamber members and civil society representatives to share a common observation: there is an endemic mafia currently taking root on the island, and its existence is a threat to the lives of the Corsican people.
Several events led to this session. An act of arson against a local car dealer engaged in politics in August 2019 was followed by the assassination of Massimu Susini in September, an ecologist and nationalist militant aged 36 who refused to let local drug dealers install in his city of Cargèse. These violent events triggered the founding of two civil society associations fighting the mafia. The Corsican Assembly promised to address this drift shortly afterward, but had to reschedule it countless times.
During the visit of the French Minister of the Interior this summer, information about the existence of approximately 25 criminal gangs dispersed throughout the island sparked outrage in civil society. The local prosecutor affirmed that these gangs couldn’t be qualified as an endemic mafia, but as only using “mafia methods”. The region is tragically first in terms of assassination, with 0,38 murders for 10,000 inhabitants in 2021 (mainly by firearms), compared with a rate of 0,15 for the national French average.
Yesterday, the assembly took note of this observation and requested access to all information from the French state necessary to understand and qualify the phenomenon. Accordingly, they appeal for an audit of the French administrative and juridical authorities to get a common understanding of the issue and their own views on how to address it.
The coming months will be critical in identifying solutions to this mafia phenomenon, which has roots on this Mediterranean island but is not the same as Sicilian mafia or Calabrian “Ndrangheta.” Nonetheless, Corsican gangs have shifted since the 1980s from a criminality mainly focused on robberies to a more elaborate form, mixing racketeering, drug dealing, and money laundering in the tourist industry of the island. Nowadays, all gangs exert a form of pressure on local communities, inducing fear and intimidation against those who will oppose them. Let’s hope the French authorities will hear this appeal and find a way to eradicate this form of criminality.
