Spotlight 29: Can mafia film be realistic?
The Godfather turns 50: from myths to fiction to reality.
Hi and welcome back to the 29th issue of Spotlight, a fortnightly collection of news, articles, and events about organised crime and corruption curated by Firm UK.
Every two weeks a collective of experts, academics, and volunteers will select a few relevant articles and/or events that will help you to understand our society under the hood.
Mafia films can make a whole genre in cinema and television: there is a lot for every taste. However, oftentimes it is important to understand where fiction ends and false representation of facts begins. In this issue, we open up with the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece "Il Padrino” (The Godfather) asking ourselves if what we see on screen is not just art and if what we see on trials at times looks more like a film.
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With ‘The Godfather,’ Art Imitated Mafia Life. And Vice Versa
The movie The Godfather turns 50 on the 14th of March 2022 and its influence on mafia studies as well as mafias in popular culture is undeniable.
Mario Puzo, who wrote “The Godfather,” has said that the novel’s keenly observed depictions came from his meticulous research. But, the article notices,
“since the movie premiered half a century ago, this prime example of art imitating Mafia life has gone on to work in the other direction, too. Generations of mobsters have looked to “The Godfather” for inspiration, validation and as a playbook for how to speak and act and dress, as seen in law enforcement wiretaps and through interviews with some of the players themselves”.
This long read looks at some of the evidence of this and what this might mean for the current status of Italian mafias in the US.
The Godfather at 50: celebrating the mob saga that raised the bar for gangster films
This article too looks at The Godfather's 50th birthday but from a specific angle, that of film studies. Considered one of the great classics of American cinema, the triple Oscar-winning Godfather turns 50 on March 14.
The author notices that,
“A bold piece of storytelling, the film reinvented the gangster epic, setting a high bar for all the mafia movies that followed in its wake. It also secured legions of fans obsessed by the murky underworld of the mob”.
Additionally, the movie is a classic also because it “revolutionised the portrayal of organised crime by conflating it with something all audiences can relate to the family”.
Citing famous Italian semiologist and writer Umberto Eco the article concludes “that a cult film must offer a “fully furnished world” that fans can return to again and again”, and that for these reasons The Godfather remains a unique legendary movie.
Boss Babies: The Children Who Own Hundreds of Luxembourg Corporations
This story is part of OCCRP’s OpenLux project, which draws on data collected in 2020 from the Luxembourg corporate registry.
When Luxembourg opened up its register of beneficial owners in 2019, the new data revealed a surprising fact: hundreds of children own or hold significant stakes in companies based in the grand duchy.
OCCRP and its partners identified 291 minors who own or control significant stakes in Luxembourg companies. They included minors whose parents are oligarchs, criminals, or people with ties to politically influential figures.
The article notices that
“While it is not illegal for children to own companies in Luxembourg, in many cases, the companies' owners were younger than the companies themselves” which is of course shady.
SUISSE SECRETS
Swiss banks have been synonymous with secrecy for decades, conjuring up visions of vast riches safely held in mountain vaults. It's a strong brand — one Switzerland's government does everything it can to protect.
OCCRP obtained leaked records on more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts, the largest leak ever from a major Swiss bank.
This webpage allows readers to interactively move across stories, actors and protagonists of this massive financial empire.
Is this the new face of organized crime? Decoding Razzlekhan, the rapping bitcoin fraudster
Heather Morgan, 31, is at the centre of a cryptocurrency saga, that began when the pair were arrested on suspicion of laundering $4.5bn worth of stolen bitcoin. She was offered bail on Valentine’s Day, releasing her from incarceration while her husband, Ilya “Dutch” Liechtenstein, remains in federal bondage.
That money was originally pilfered from a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange firm called Bitfinex, and it breaks the record for the most digital currency that’s ever been seized by a criminal sting operation.
This article asks “who is this Bitcoin crime queen” and what does her story tell us about the future of organised crime and the stark new inequalities that it might create.
The author notices
“The lasting legacy of Morgan and Lichtenstein may be that they’ve killed the image we hold of a criminal kingpin in our heads”.
North is ‘the back yard of the mafia’
The brutal assassination of a Turkish Cypriot businessman, Halil Falyali, with alleged links to the underworld, days after the father of another businessman was shot and injured, has once again called into question the goings-on in the unrecognised entity that has been established in the northern part of Cyprus.
Falyali, who had very close ties with many Turkish Cypriot politicians and was known as the main sponsor of the campaigns of Ersin Tatar’s National Unity Party UBP, faced criminal charges in the United States for money laundering.
A US court affidavit dating back to July 2015, stated that he runs “a large-scale drug and weapons trafficking organisation” in northern Cyprus and is “known to be associated with Turkish organised crime”.
“This small piece of land, where international law and rules do not apply, is crushed under the intense influence of Turkey, but at the same time, has become a base for the dirty activities originating from Turkey,”
associate professor Yonca Ozdemir of political science and international relations told Medyascope.tv for this article.
Events
[21st March 2022, h 14:00 CET] Gender, corruption, organized crime: Understanding gender dynamics, building better responses
This event will explore the roles women play in building community resilience to organized crime and corruption, the socio-economic factors shaping these roles and the challenges associated with them, highlighting how women act as change-makers in driving resistance to corruption and criminal governance.[22nd March 2022, h 15:00 CET] illicit economies and armed conflict: Ten dynamics that drive instability
This report considers three case studies at different stages of armed conflict to assess the dynamic relationship between criminal networks, illicit economies, and conflict actors and conditions. These three case studies offer unique perspectives in terms of duration, size of the conflict area and stage of the conflict.
Books, podcasts & more
Gangs on Trial: Challenging Stereotypes and Demonization in the Courts.
John Hagedorn, who has long been an expert witness in gang-related court cases, claims that what transpires in the trials of gang members is a far cry from what we would consider justice. In Gangs on Trial, he recounts his decades of experience to show how stereotypes are used against gang members on trial and why that is harmful. Hagedorn uses real-life stories to explain how implicit bias often replaces evidence and how the demonization of gang members undermines fairness. Moreover, a "them and us" mentality leads to snap judgments that ignore the complexity of gang life in America. Gangs on Trial dispels myths about gangs and recommends tactics for lawyers, mitigation specialists, and expert witnesses as well as offering insights for jurors. Hagedorn describes how minds are subconsciously "primed" when a defendant is identified as a gang member and discusses the "backfire effect," which occurs when jurors hear arguments that run counter to their beliefs. He also reveals how attributional errors, prejudice, and racism impact sentences of nonwhite defendants. Hagedorn argues that dehumanization is the psychological foundation of mass incarceration. Gangs on Trial advocates for practical sentencing reforms and humanizing justice.