Italian newspapers have been filled with tales from the “Mafia Capitale” trial this month, as Massimo Carminati, a right-wing extremist with a criminal history, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for diverting millions of euros that had been designated for public services into the bank accounts of politicians and businessmen.

Among those accused is the former right-wing mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, who was in office when the majority of the bribery and extortion took place. Although the label “mafia” was quickly applied to Carminati, his accomplice Salvatore Buzzi, and 45 others who faced trial for their involvement in the scandal, their lawyers have been quick to push back against using the word as a catch-all phrase.

Giosuè Naso, one of Carminati’s lawyers, stated that “if everything is mafia, nothing is mafia” and argued that using that label detracts from law enforcement efforts against crime syndicates. In Italy, trials involving the mafia come with a different set of punitive measures as “mafia association” itself can be considered a crime. Judge Rosanna Ianniello ultimately decided Carminati and Buzzi were guilty of corruption, not mafia association, even though the state made an argument that the operation was mafia-like and that certain members of the group had ties to the ‘Ndrangheta, Calabria’s powerful mafia. Gianni Alemanno has also been cleared of mafia association charges but is still awaiting trial for corruption and illegal funding of his political party.

The city of Rome is currently in dire economic straits, having pulled out of its bid for the 2024 Olympics  last year because it simply did not have the funds to continue. The financial woes of the city are directly linked to Carminati and Buzzi, whose bribery and extortion racket pulled public funds from a host of civic projects–including public housing for refugees–and shifted the funds into private coffers. Carminati and Buzzi have been in prison for over two years under Italy’s infamous 41-bis prison regime, designed specifically for mafia detainees, but going forward they will be granted more relaxed conditions in prison for their multi-decade sentences.

The two men and their accomplices may have been cleared of mafia charges but it will take years to track down and redistribute the funds they stole. Although law enforcement forces are confident they have removed the crime ring from city hall, there may still be members who escaped the crackdown and will return to their bribery practices once public scrutiny is relaxed. In the meantime, Rome is struggling, overflowing with garbage, struggling to house its population and maintain its public spaces. After a harsh drought this summer, Rome is now considering rationing drinking water for the 1.5 million residents of the city. The Eternal City desperately needs funding and responsible leaders to make sure public funds are spent effectively and responsibly. Mayor Virginia Raggi holds relatively high popularity with Roman voters and her M5S party has framed itself as the “outsider” party, separate from the corruption of the past–yet as the infrastructure and public services of Rome deteriorate, she may see difficulties.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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Cardinal George Pell has been charged with multiple sexual assault allegations by Australian authorities. Pell is the highest ranking member of the Catholic Church to be implicated in the child abuse scandal that has tarnished the church’s reputation throughout the past few decades.

Pell is accused of “historical sexual assault offenses.” These include at least two men who have come forward and described Pell inappropriately touching them at a swimming pool in the 1970s. Pell denied these allegations after an interview aired on Australian television in 2016 and he has denounced this “relentless character assassination,” according to the Washington Post.

Pope Francis did not release a statement on the issue, but the Vatican said that it feels “great regret” over the situation and that the Pope has appreciated what Pell did during his three years in Rome, according to the Washington Post.

Pell is set to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on July 18. The magistrate will decide next week whether not to release the details of the investigation, according to BBC.

While he has repeatedly said he will fully cooperate with the investigation, Pell has also strongly denied the accusations. The Pope has granted him a leave of absence to fight the charges, according to BBC. Pell said that he would make the trip back to Australia if his doctor permits it. Last year doctors would not permit him to fly back to Australia last year so he answered questions from detectives via videochat.

“I’m looking forward finally to having my day in court,” Pell said. “I am innocent of these charges, they are false. The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.”

Pell, an adviser to the Pope and Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, is a native of Ballarat, Australia, and was the Archbishop of Melbourne and then Sydney before becoming a cardinal in 2004. Named the head of the Vatican’s finances in 2014, Pell is considered the third most powerful person in the church.

In the past decade Pell has played a prominent role on Vatican commissions created to combat sexual assault within the Roman Catholic community. In 2013 he was named one of eight cardinals charged with investigating ways to reform the church, according to CNN. However, he has also been criticized for his lack of impact on the investigations and supposed connections with known child-abusing priests.

Because of his powerful position within the Vatican and the Australian Catholic community, it is possible that these allegations will be the biggest obstacle the church faces when it comes to combatting child abuse. Peter Saunders, a British abuse survivor who served on a papal commission investigating the abuse, told the Washington Post:

[These charges] will probably rock the Vatican like nothing else has ever done…The fact that one of the pope’s right-hand men, the secretary for the economy, has in a sense been arrested and will be charged with such serious offenses, that surely has got to have some kind of effect on the Vatican and the hierarchy.

So, the coming months will be telling for how the Pope and the Catholic Church respond to the accusations against Pell and the recurring issues with abuse within the church. While they’ve dealt with past scandals within the Vatican and in other branches, such a high profile conviction brings with it new challenges in addition to worldwide attention. Pope Francis has made it one of his goals to cleanse the church of child abuse and this will likely set him back.

Josh Schmidt

Josh Schmidt is an editorial intern and is a native of the Washington D.C Metropolitan area. He is working towards a degree in multi-platform journalism with a minor in history at nearby University of Maryland. Contact Josh at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Virginia Raggi, the newly appointed mayor of Rome, is facing pushback after news outlets revealed a minister she appointed, Paola Muraro, was under investigation during the twelve years she spent as a garbage disposal consultant. Trash disposal is an infrastructure necessity for all cities, but only in Italy is trash synonymous with organized crime, corruption, and intimidation.

Trash collection has been an extremely profitable industry for the Italian mafia, and scores of local politicians have been happy to give it control of refuse. In the mid-2000s, the streets of major cities in the South, such as Naples, were filled with thousands of pounds of garbage. Regional dumps were at full capacity and even though government emergency funding was granted, the money disappeared and the appointed commissioners failed to solve the problem. Under the state of emergency protocols, local governments were allowed to quickly hand out contracts without going through the correct legal vetting of contractors used in other cities–and this allowed the Camorra (a particular syndicate) to expand its practice into a billion dollar profit generator. The corruption behind trash collection has not gone unnoticed–reports of the mafia dumping trash in Germany and illegally dumping so much toxic waste that cancer rates in the region began rising have become commonplace, but acknowledging the problem has not translated into solving it. In many countries, trash disposal issues would be written off as a minor mismanagement but in Italy, the history behind trash corruption makes the investigation into Muraro front page news.

At a hearing this week, Virginia Raggi confirmed that she was aware of the investigation into Muraro’s past but had not thought that it was necessary to share this information with the public. The trash scandal is hardly Raggi’s only problem: multiple ministers have resigned from her administration (including Carla Romana Ranieri, a well-known anti-corruption figure), she is grappling with a bid to host the 2024 Olympics, and as Rome’s first female mayor, her every action is judged through the prism of her gender.

Unfortunately for Raggi, the trash scandal has put her Five Star Movement–a populist, anti-establishment Eurosceptic movement–in a difficult spot right before the elections. The incumbent Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has gotten a boost in the popularity thanks to Raggi’s missteps. Before this scandal, the Five Star had overtaken Renzi, whose numerous reforms to political and economic systems have stirred up anger and distrust among voters. As Raggi struggles to right herself just weeks into her tenure as mayor, doubts are being raised regarding the capabilities of the Five Star movement, which was not originally organized to be a formal political party and has never had a precise platform. Despite being a party that promotes itself as environmentally conscious and operating outside of the traditional corrupt networks of the political world, the Five Star movement seems to have delivered more of the same. For the city of Rome, which has struggled to assert itself as capable of being just as productive and functional as a Northern city such as Milan, this scandal is an regression that embarrasses the city not only on the world stage but domestically, confirming some Northern beliefs that Rome is still too backwards to succeed.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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A University of Wisconsin-Madison student who was in Rome for a summer study abroad program was found dead in the Tiber River on Monday. On Tuesday, an Italian homeless man was arrested for “aggravated murder” in connection with his death, according to Italian authorities involved with the case.

Beau Solomon, 19, arrived in Rome on Thursday to spend his summer studying at John Cabot University. He went to a pub with his roommate Thursday evening in Trastevere, a Rome neighborhood on the banks of the Tiber. Solomon’s roommate said the two lost contact at about one in the morning, and he reported him missing on Friday morning when he failed to attend orientation. His body was found on Monday, roughly 2,000 feet from the pub where he spent his final evening.

“In our family, he is the one who does it all right. He’s an incredible athlete. He is the one that keeps us all together,” Jake Solomon, Beau’s older brother, told NBC News before his brother was confirmed dead. He also noted that his brother was a cancer survivor.

Few details have emerged in the days since his disappearance. According to Italian news reports, over $1,700 was charged to Solomon’s credit card after his disappearance, including a purchase on Friday in Milan, 350 miles north of Rome. Rebecca Blank, chancellor of UW-Madison, where Solomon was a rising sophomore and personal finance major, expressed her condolences on Twitter:

Beau Solomon was a bright and caring young man who lived the Wisconsin Idea. All of us at UW-Madison are greatly saddened by this loss.

— Becky Blank (@BeckyBlank) July 4, 2016

Massimo Galioto, a 40-year-old homeless man from Rome, was detained by Italian investigators Tuesday because he was “seriously implicated” in connection to Solomon’s murder.

Solomon is the third of four brothers. He fought cancer from ages 10 to 12, and took up football, rising through the youth football ranks in his hometown–Spring Green, Wisconsin, a small village 40 miles west of Madison. He was the starting quarterback for the River Valley Blackhawks–a high school in Spring Green–his junior and senior seasons.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jake Solomon said that his brother was the “toughest S.O.B. that we’ve ever met,” and dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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