Cracking story on Bloomberg, straight out of the annals of couldn’t make it up if you tried, and involving the Sicilian Mafia, Venezuelan bonds and a host of global banks (emphasis ours):
May 22 (Bloomberg) — Italian prosecutors today broke up an international ring led by the Sicilian Mafia that tried to use fake Venezuelan bonds to obtain credit lines totaling $2.2 billion from HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of America Corp. and unidentified British banks, according to an arrest warrant.
“This was a colossal operation,” Marcello Viola, one of the lead prosecutors, said in a telephone interview from Palermo, Sicily. Some of the Mafia-linked people involved “were experts in finance who traveled the world,” he said.
The leader of the ring was Leonardo Badalamenti, son of the late Gaetano Badalamenti, the former Mafia boss of Cinisi, Sicily, prosecutors charge. Badalamenti was arrested in Sao Paolo, Brazil, according to the court document. Eighteen others were detained in Italy and Venezuela.
Sicily’s Mafia, also known as Cosa Nostra, is increasingly trying to use legitimate businesses to generate profit, according to Italy’s top Mafia prosecutor, Pietro Grasso. Last year Italian organized crime syndicates had revenue of 130 billion euros ($182 billion), according to estimates by Rome- based research institute Eurispes and anti-extortion group SOS Impresa.
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False Venezuelan bonds were authenticated by corrupt officials within the South American nation’s central bank, prosecutors said. The bonds were used to ask for credit lines of $500 million each from HSBC in London and Bank of America in Baltimore in 2003 and 2004. U.K. authorities and the U.S. Secret Service broke up both the deals before either bank provided financing, Viola said.
At the time of the arrests, a third attempt to use false Venezuelan bonds worth 880 million euros ($1.2 billion) was still under way through a San Marino bank and involving U.K. financial institutions, the arrest warrant says.
From Italian windfarms to fake Venezuelan bonds – these mafia types are nothing if not creative. And evidently, profitable.