The True Story of a Welsh Godfather

Episode 5
Mafias play a strong role in Thai society. The Godfather in Wales is, as we will see, in good company with Godfathers from other countries.

In Thailand, it is customary to invite your superior to speak at your son’s wedding, to ask him to be the guest of honour at the opening of a new building, or to sit with the family in the front row at a funeral. A great opportunity for ordinary people to be influenced by these mafia cliques.

The poloi, the plebs sometimes referred to as the uneducated masses, are easy prey for the mafia godfathers of the élite.

There is an example in my book, A Thailand Diary. Khun Sompanya, desperate to re-gain some popularity, tried inviting a senior government official to open an extension to the main office building. More specifically, to open the new toilet block.

He politely declined. It reminded me of the story of the French mayor in Gabriel Chevalier’s Clochemerle when he planned to construct a urinal in the town square of his village in Beaujolais.

Clochemerle by Gabriel Chevalier. A fictional town but relevant to this story.

The ceremony of the loo would have attracted a lot of formal white uniforms being worn and the taking of many photographs. The younger generation, and indeed even middle-aged Thais, are beginning to shy away from such functions requiring this show of uniforms.

At a recent event, it was noticeable that some key people were absent. Many people were not wearing their full insignia. This tradition of showing your position in public is not now always observed.

But national events, especially those associated with royalty and Buddhism, continue to attract high numbers of participants.

Sometimes your judgment can become suspect if you try too hard to impress or show off. The Thai love of ceremonial and dressing up can, if repeated too often, become a little overbearing and boring. Showing one’s rank and status in society is a Thai characteristic that the élite particularly do not always get right. It can backfire on them. Khun Sompanya is going to have to think of another way to be noticed in the district.

The toilet is in use, but nobody was privy (sic) to any opening ceremony.

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Let’s look at some world mafias.

While the Italian authorities and media attention were focused on the Sicilians, the Calabrians were able to slowly but steadily expand into Italy’s wealthy north. Al Jazeera reports that the crackdown, which was accompanied by a flood of grass-roots anti-Mafia campaigns, led to major changes in the crime syndicate’s culture.

But the rise of the Calabrian Ndrangheta only proved to be the trigger that enabled the state’s successful war on the Sicilian mafia, and many arrests followed.

A police mugshot of a Calabrian Ndrangheta godfather

In the 1990s, a spate of assassinations across Sicily targeting anti-Mafia judges, police chiefs and politicians prompted a public backlash against the Mafia. The huge government crackdown did indeed curb the power of the Sicilian syndicate.

The prosecutor, Piero Grasso, argued in his 2001 book The Invisible Mafia that the days of the celebrity mob boss flaunting flashy cars and expensive cigars have long gone. Today’s Mafiosi keep a low profile. By disappearing from public view — no more dead policemen or kidnapped journalists.

Actually, mafias are businesses, not gangs of hoodlums. They have board meetings, as we see above, in order to run their empires.

But elsewhere, the Mafia has lulled opponents into complacency. Grasso wrote that “the myth of the Mafia as a defanged beast could not be further from the truth, especially in the south of Italy, where organised crime “occupies the entire territory”.

According to anti-Mafia prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho, legitimate businesses across Calabria, particularly those involved in construction and public works, are frequently controlled by gangs.

Italy’s “Rai News” reported that in some hotbeds of Mafia activity, the line between organised crime and the state is far from clear-cut. A few years ago, police arrested 169 people in Germany and Italy over suspected connections to Mafia organisations, more than a dozen of whom were local Calabrian government officials, including three mayors and a deputy mayor.

The Daily Telegraph wrote that, despite a stream of arrests and prosecutions, the mafia has proven very adaptable to new scenarios, preying on weakness and looking for economic crises as sources of opportunities. The bombing of the Twin Towers is a good example. Many law enforcement officers were taken off anti-mafia duties.

A mafioso arrested by Italian police. He’s smiling because he probably knows some judges who will find him not guilty.

The EU and beyond.
During the twenty-first century, the Mafia has extended its operations across Europe and beyond. Thanks mostly to the global drugs trade, Italian crime families now operate “from Armenia to Australia”, as The Sydney Morning Herald puts it. Common rackets include extortion, prostitution, counterfeiting and arms sales But, drug trafficking is by far the most lucrative.

A 2014 profile of the Ndrangheta by the Demoskopika research institute found that the organisation had raked in a total of €53bn (£47bn) over the previous year — “more than Deutsche Bank and McDonald’s put together”, says The Guardian, and equivalent to 3.5% of Italy’s GDP.

Even in the heavily regulated EU, mafias are able to infiltrate legitimate businesses. A 2015 report funded by the European Commission found evidence of Mafia investment in “a large number of European countries… in particular, in real estate, construction companies, bars, restaurants and the wholesale and retail of food products”. The Ndrangheta can now call upon up to 60,000 foot soldiers scattered across 30 countries, says Quartz.