Italian police seize assets linked to suspected illegal gambling network in Brindisi

Italian police executed a court-ordered seizure on 28 October targeting Tobia Parisi, whom authorities consider a senior figure in the Sacra Corona Unita, in the Brindisi area. Police also took action against Parisi's partner and other relatives, according to the account of the operation. The seized assets include a bar described as an operational centre for a clandestine gambling network.

The Free Time Lounge Bar in Mesagne came first. The 10,700-square-foot premises served, in the view of investigators, as a logistics base for the criminal organisation as well as a hub of operations for an underground betting network. Police then took Carlucci Car, a dealership in the vicinity that Parisi is accused of controlling through a go-between. The operation also covered a small countryside villa, which investigators suspect once gave shelter to the fugitive crime boss Daniele Vicientino, and an apartment in Brindisi of the high-end kind that was registered in his partner's name. Vehicles bought with illicit money were confiscated too, together with many bank accounts, savings deposits and prepaid cards at different financial institutions.

A sentence of 13 years in prison for attempted extortion was handed to Parisi last June, and that ruling is currently under appeal. What first brought him to investigators' attention was the gap between the income he reported and the way he lived. He was officially registered as an agricultural worker, yet he allegedly controlled assets worth at least EUR 600,000 ($669,000). According to officials, his criminal past spanned the last 25 years.

These seizures belong to a broader, ongoing campaign by Italian authorities against unlawful betting. In July, officers raided illegal gambling dens around Agrigento, confiscating unlicensed machines and imposing fines of roughly $23,000; at one of the hubs, the machines were found to be off the PREU network, the system through which Italy's gaming levy is applied. February had already seen a crackdown in the province of Reggio Calabria, where an illegal gaming den operated as a complete gaming shop and was said to have links to a Maltese gaming licensee.