The carabinieri ended the escape of Matteo Denaro, the most wanted man in Italy, on January 16. At 60, the Sicilian mobster will have spent half of his life running from the police. Since the death of Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano in 2016 and 2017, he has been considered the new thinking head of Cosa Nostra.
But if it was a very humane police that allowed his capture, Italian criminals must now be wary of a new type of threat: algorithms.
Scrutinize the public accounts of companies
The Calabrian mafia, nicknamed ‘Ndrangheta, has seen software start tracking their finances for several months. Because, as Antonio Parbonnetti explains in Point “A company that meets the requirements of the criminal organization shows in the numbers.” The professor at the department of economics at the University of Padua, near Venice, is developing software with his team capable of detecting mafia activities on company balance sheets.
As part of a study, the software has revealed that 30,000 companies in Veneto are linked in one way or another to organized crime, reports Corriere del Veneto. This represents 5 to 7% of the companies in the Italian region. These results have come to light through the use of extensive data, extracted from the verdicts of anti-mafia trials. The tool is thus capable of scrutinizing the public accounts of companies and analyzing their financial transactions. Therefore, it is possible to find inconsistencies in finances.
Similar software is behind an Interpol initiative called I-Can, an international collaborative program against the ‘Ndrangheta. In total, thirteen countries – including France, Spain, Switzerland and the United States – have joined Italy in the fight against the expansion of the Calabrian mafia outside the country.
identify trends
The Italian version of Wired details that the ‘Ndrangheta is now seeking to reinvest its illicit capital outside of Italy. Therefore, it is more difficult for the police to follow these financial movements, due to the lack of adequate judicial cooperation with the countries chosen by the criminals. This is why the use of an algorithm could make it easier to track mafia activities.
In its operation, the software will interactively explore information from millions of different sources. Wired warns that technology will remain just a tool and detective talent will be essential.
However, predictive capabilities have recently been added to the device, it specifies the South Gazetta. Thus, it is possible to identify trends and patterns similar to the operations already documented. Law enforcement will thus be able to concentrate their work on these suspicious operations.
A final phase of development is planned between 2024 and 2025. Then the software will reach its full potential. You will then be able to collate internal and external information and offer enhanced analytical qualities. This strongly slows down the expansion desire of the Calabrian mafia internationally.
Source: BFM TV
