On October 17, 1931, Alphonse Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Not because he was head of the Chicago underworld, Mafia capo who ran prostitution, illegal gambling and smuggling of alcohol. Not for the death of his competitors, which were many, or for fatally wrecking the life of the victims of exploitation. Capone was sent to prison for tax evasion. All his network of hidden dirty business and front men could be demonstrated before a court which sentenced him to 11 years in prison. After spending two years in prison in Atlanta from where he continued to control the “business”, he ended up being transferred to the infamous Alcatraz Island, where he remained for just over 5 years.

The major downfall of his mafia network was not as much to do with his arrest and imprisonment, but with the effective Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to repeal Prohibition, which had given so many benefits to mafia groups.

Silvio Berlusconi has been avoiding prison with scams worthy of Capone’s best; even raising the stakes by using public office activities as fronts for his misdeeds, appealing to the immunity granted by such positions. The three-time Italian prime minister, never hid his entry into politics to escape arrest warrants which then got prescribed from his lofty position  that made him capable of digging, obstructing justice and exercising extortion on the Italian legal system, already tainted by mafia connections.

This week he was sentenced permanently, perhaps it means that he cannot avoid arrest for the creation of a scheme to evade millions of Euros from Italian tax authorities, through overbilled contracts by his company Mediaset, which controls about thirty channels of television and cable, in Italy (half of them), Spain, France and Germany.

The sentence to four years in prison would mean a conviction of a year of house arrest that could be exchanged for community service. This sentence is for the proven evasion of 14 million Euros between 2001 and 2003, although estimates published by the Italian press speak of more than 360m since the eighties.

The cartel of predators

In June he was convicted for child prostitution, for the familiar case “Ruby”, a young Moroccan he confessed to having had sex with, when she was underage. The sentence includes disqualification to hold public office for the crime of extortion. This judgment has been appealed, so the seven years in prison imposed are awaiting final judgment.

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn utilised a checkbook blow to get rid of sexual abuse charges from a maid at the Sofitel Hotel in New York, when it seemed he would be the successor Nicolas Sarkozy as French PM. The nomination by the French Socialist Party was frustrated by his involvement in this international scandal, with crossed extradition requests between France and the USA.

However, he is now a suspect in a case of aggravated procuring women for sex which could sentence him to 10 years in prison for having created a network of prostitution.

The similarities between these sexual predators (Berlusconi and Strauss-Kahn) are clear and manifest; they use their power to obtain ephemeral and degrading pleasures. Their convictions could be regarded positively, were we not aware of all judicial tricks at their disposal to continue to assert their power and influence.

Bill Clinton also went through this, but he used a technique much more explosive. The day after the news disclosing his sexual relations with Monica Lewinski he ordered the bombing of Serbia, dropping the largest number of bombs per minute, so far, in the history of humankind. A criminal bombing, even atomic, that created a smoke screen thick enough to avoid social condemnation from a prude society such as the American.

In recent days a book has been published also on sexual abuse by another friend of Silvio Berlusconi’s, Muammar Gaddafi, who, say the authors of the book, retained a harem for his personal sexual satisfaction and for his private escort. Of course, this trend does not equate the predatory destructive populism suffered by Italy under Il Cavaliere’s rule, with the Libyan pan-Africanism eliminated from the face of the earth by NATO, a clear betrayal to the services rendered, never so well said, to European states by the millions of the North African leader.

Appendix

When Peña Nieto won the Mexico elections and the PRI recovered what was its fiefdom for 80 years, the United States of Mexico, many analysts spoke of the risk this represented. The PRI has among its ranks drug cartels that finance and do the dirty work eliminating competitors and complainants about corruption and complicity between politicians and drug traffickers.

Calderon, with his famous drug war, had allowed the rise of anti-PRI cartels that permitted the outgoing president, to some dramatic effects, evidence of some hunting of drug dealers, though without showing that some were done away with to put others in their place. The rise of Peña Nieto reopened this war, generating new massacres, to rearrange the distribution channels of the Aztec country.

The cruelty, sadism and virulence of these cartels are bloodcurdling, cutting with machete hostages alive, as can be seen in videos uploaded to Youtube, which I refuse to give publicity to It speaks of government tolerance for these criminals. The power built by the PRI, based on a hegemonic media as well as economic contributions from drug trafficking, makes them the most complete example of mobster rule.