Inside the Sicilian ice cream empire built on mafia money
Two scoops of pistachio, one of corruption. For years holidaymakers have guzzled Sicilian gelato at famous parlours in Palermo, unaware that the booming businesses were controlled by organised crime.
The fraud was a textbook case for detectives trained to sniff out dirty money, but even with three mobster classics — a suspicious bankruptcy, a front man and a scheming “Godfather” — it took years for investigators to shut the operation down.
The Brioscia brand, made up of two ice cream parlours, was thriving at the end of the 2010s, attracting locals and foreign visitors alike with its glittering gold stars on travel websites.
The shops were run by Mario Mancuso. Behind the scenes was Michele Micalizzi who had served several stretches in jail for Mafia association.
Mancuso took care of the ice cream, Micalizzi managed the rest.
That included taking a cut of the profits for protecting Mancuso from extortion attempts by other gangsters, a judicial source told AFP.
But the company was in the name of Mancuso’s wife and when divorce loomed, the men feared they would lose control.
They declared Brioscia bankrupt in 2021, blaming the four million euro ($4.3 million) hole in the books on the Covid lockdown, the source said.
“It was a flourishing business, very well known in Palermo. The bankruptcy was therefore unjustified,” he told AFP.
Suspicious investigators used wiretaps to discover the two men — far from being bankrupt — had grand plans to open parlours abroad.
The pair launched a new company called Sharbat, renaming the shops, the source said.
“I’m not even sure the employees knew who they were working for”, a nearby shop worker said on condition of anonymity.
Investigators say the men divided the windfall, with Micalizzi passing part of it to his jailed relatives to pay for legal fees or sundries.
But on August 12, the police pounced, arresting both men and four accomplices, and seizing 1.5 million euros.
Mancuso and Micalizzi are being prosecuted for criminal association of a mafia nature, extortion and fraudulent bankruptcy.
The Mafia’s billions
Between drug trafficking, racketeering, public procurement, legal companies or empty shells dedicated to money laundering, Italy’s Central Bank estimates the annual turnover of the country’s organised crime groups at 40 billion euros, or two percent of national wealth.
The mob still makes good money from traditional crimes such as drug trafficking. The ‘Ndrangheta in the southern region of Calabria, for example, is responsible for much of Europe’s cocaine trade.
“It also makes direct investments in the legal economy,” according to Rocco Sciarrone, who teaches criminal psychology at Turin University.
Over two-thirds of mafia infiltrations are in the construction, trade, real estate and manufacturing sectors, according to a 2022 report by economist Antonio Parbonetti.
The mob also has tentacles in agriculture, hotels and restaurants, logistics, transport, and waste management.
How much the crime groups “invest” in each sector varies significantly from one region to another.
“The socio-economic fabric (in Sicily) is made up of small family businesses that lend themselves very well to money laundering,” said Eliseo Davi from Palermo University.
According to the Parbonetti report, one in two companies controlled by the mafia is a so-called “star” company, which generates comfortable income and employs people, and therefore has a broad social, economic and political support.
In the Palermo gelato affair, the company did not have the necessary permits for one of the two shops, prompting calls for a probe into whether there was collusion with public officials.
Near the parlours lies the former home of Giovanni Falcone, an anti-mafia judge whose 1992 assassination by the mob triggered a crackdown by the state that permanently weakened Cosa Nostra.
Just like US law enforcement agent Eliot Ness, who brought down gangster Al Capone, Falcone had a simple rule: follow the money.
