Rome, the squat racket. “There is a mole in the Town Hall”
From Magliana to Cinecittà Est, from Don Bosco to Romanina. One in three privately owned apartments are occupied. There are bands that divide entire streets and neighborhoods, each with its own entangled in apartment buildings and even in municipal offices. Spies who, behind a “reasonable” remuneration, warn, from time to time, when a family “needs” and a house is freed and, while waiting for a new assignment, start the raids, complete with masons and blacksmiths who , at night, they unhinge locks and knock down doors to allow squatters to enter.
THE INQUIRIES
There are investigations started by the Tuscolano and Romanina police stations which have already led to the first arrests. And the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office, after the flash occupation of the house of the elderly Ennio Di Lalla, which he had redeemed in via Pasquale del Giudice in Don Bosco, is acquiring further information to be merged into a new file. The spotlight of the investigators is focused on some waves of “anomalous” and more recent occupations. Those that have led several families of South American, Chilean and Peruvian nationalities to occupy numerous apartments in the buildings of viale Ciamarra and via Francesco Gentile, while elsewhere, such as in via Sante Vandi, to occupy are mainly citizens of Romanian and Moldavian nationality.
Just coincidences? Difficult to think. The track of those who investigate is that well-structured groups divide roads and areas of influence, taking advantage of links between foreign communities and moles within the municipal apparatuses, that is, people able by their influence to recruit potential occupants, for example, between those who turn to the Municipalities to ask for accommodation. In addition to or as an alternative to applying for a council house, the “shortcut” would be offered to them.
THE MECHANISM
A business, the housing racket, as profitable as other criminal businesses such as drug trafficking and extortion. A long-time investigator explains that “for each occupied house the squatter is willing to pay from 4 to 10 thousand euros, which is little or nothing compared to the prospect of not paying the rent or the mortgage for years”. It is not only the Italians who are often in trouble with the justice system and the criminal organizations, in their own way, often find accommodation among the buildings owned by Ater and assigned by the Municipality.
The mechanism concerns buildings owned by the entities also in via Pietro Marchisio and in via Libero Leonardi, in via Flavio Stilicone and in via Calpurnio Fiamma. Occupations also occurred between the Trullo and the Magliana. Blitz after blitz, over the years, in Cinecittà Est alone there is an average of one apartment out of three illegally occupied. Few of the cases agents and carabinieri were able to intervene immediately, perhaps following the notification of a tenant. Above all, despite the occupation being a crime considered “permanent”, the judicial authority almost never decides to proceed in flagrant status.
MULTI FROM 300 EUROS
The times for the evacuation become biblical and destined to stop in the presence of the elderly or sick children. Not only. The proceedings mostly end in front of the justice of the peace, at the end of the “minor” cases. Article 633 of the criminal code, in fact, provides that “anyone who arbitrarily invades the land or buildings of others, public or private, in order to occupy them or otherwise profit from them, is punished, upon complaint by the injured person, with imprisonment from one to three years and with a fine from € 103 to € 1032 “. In short, as if to say, on the part of those who, in the worst case should be sent away: “Thank you very much for your hospitality and goodbye”.
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