The Mafia Gets Into Renewable Energy

[Brad Kenney]

You know that a market has some serious profit potential when the mob gets caught muscling its way into the market.

From an AP story:

Italian police on Tuesday arrested mobsters, businessmen and local politicians who allegedly used corrupt practices and bribes to gain control of a project to build wind farms in Sicily.
...
The project, worth hundreds of millions of euros (dollars), was first devised in 2003 and later uncovered by an investigation that included wiretaps, police said in a statement.
...
Investigators discovered that luxury cars and thousands of euros in bribes were given to politicians to ensure that a Mafia-backed company won the lucrative public contract.

The suspects also illegally accessed the municipality's safe to copy the proposal of a rival company, which was later excluded from the bidding.

So let's see -- massive moneys swirling around green energy projects, corrupt politicians, uncompetitive practices -- sounds just like the US these days. (Hopefully, we can skip the actual Mafioso.)