«The social reuse of confiscated assets is fundamental, we ask that 2% of the Single Justice Fund can be reinvested to change the face of illicit assets and regenerate the territories damaged by the mafia presence». Tatiana Giannone she is Libera’s national contact person for confiscated assets. Thirty years after the approval of law 109/1996 for the social reuse of confiscated assets, the network of associations continues the campaign Let’s give life to the good to ask that a part – however small – of what derives from criminal acts and speculations can be reinvested to change the face of illicit assets and regenerate the territories wounded by the mafia presence.
«More funds are needed to start the new life of a confiscated asset as well as to grow projects – notes Giannone – having even just a small percentage of the Fund available would also be a way to close the circle, transforming an illicit economic resource into a social economic resource». At the eve of the Day of Remembrance and Commitment, March 21st in Turin, draws a positive balance: «In recent years we have managed to grow as an anti-mafia movement. The law allowed confiscated spaces to become public spaces. Perception has changed: once upon a time there was more skepticism and hesitation in approaching spaces that were still identified as criminal, today, however, confiscated assets are lived-in, participatory spaces capable of involving citizens».
The data from the National Agency for the administration and destination of assets seized and confiscated from organized crime quantify the amount of real estate destined (already transferred to the State) at 23,026 and the assets under administration (i.e. in the verification phase) at 20,848.
Added to these are 1,728 companies destined for and 3,112 under management. «On a legislative level we are at the forefront, anti-mafia legislation was born in Italy – Giannone further notes – and European legislation also looks at what we have built in our country. This leads us to say that we must defend and protect a path that is going in the right direction.”
But by whom are the confiscated assets used today and for what purposes purpose?
From the report We tell the goodrecently published by Libera, it emerges that more than half of the social entities to which the goods are entrusted are made up of associations, while there are 282 social cooperatives and 12 cooperative consortia. Welfare and social policy activities are carried out in more than half of the confiscated assets (57.6%). A good part is then dedicated to cultural promotion, knowledge and sustainable tourism (23.3%), and the remainder deals with agriculture and the environment (9%), production and work (4.2%) and sport (2.9%). «Social reuse experiences are, for our network and for local communities, real speaking placescapable of becoming a vehicle and instrument of knowledge, knowledge, identity, history and stories. Places of civil pedagogy capable of interpreting an educational function of inestimable value».
