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MAFIA

Foreign mafia move in on Italy

The Georgian mafia is encroaching on Italian soil, posing a great threat to the country, Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano reported on Monday.

Foreign mafia move in on Italy
Il Fatto said the Dolomites area in northern Italy has been infiltrated. Photo: Doc Searls/Flickr

“It’s a very serious phenomenon, a phenomenon that is changing all of our lives,” wrote journalist Ferruccio Sansa.

“The mafia is very dangerous; they are white-collared men with kalashnikovs under their jackets."

The newspaper said the Georgian mafia spends hundreds of millions of dollars and euros on buying hotels and houses in northern Italy, naming the Dolomites as one area infiltrated by the criminal gang.

The allegations come less than two weeks after Europol arrested 18 members of the Georgian Kutaisi clan, the majority of which the EU agency said were ‘thieves in law’ or elite career criminals.

Seven of the arrests were made in Italy, the result of an 18-month operation and collaboration between Europol and six EU countries. 

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RUSSIA

Russia announces no New Year’s greetings for France, US, Germany

US President Joe Biden, France's Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will not be receiving New Year's greetings from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said on Friday.

Russia announces no New Year's greetings for France, US, Germany

As the world gears up to ring in the New Year this weekend, Putin sent congratulatory messages to the leaders of Kremlin-friendly countries including Turkey, Syria, Venezuela and China.

But Putin will not wish a happy New Year to the leaders of the United States, France and Germany, countries that have piled unprecedented sanctions on Moscow over Putin’s assault on Ukraine.

“We currently have no contact with them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“And the president will not congratulate them given the unfriendly actions that they are taking on a continuous basis,” he added.

Putin shocked the world by sending troops to pro-Western Ukraine on February 24.

While Kyiv’s Western allies refused to send troops to Ukraine, they have been supplying the ex-Soviet country with weapons in a show of support that has seen Moscow suffer humiliating setbacks on the battlefield.

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