By Lavern de Vries
Organised crime syndicates, including Mafia organisations, are believed to have moved their financial operations to South Africa, says award-winning journalist John Grobler.
Grobler, who was speaking at a briefing on organised crime and money laundering at the Institute for Security Studies in Cape Town on Monday, said it was because money laundering was easy here because of an unsophisticated anti-crime corruption unit and the ability to exploit officials.
Grobler won the 2007 CNN African Freelance Journalist of the Year Award for a story on how Mafia bosses were buying unused diamond cutting and polishing licences, allegedly with the help of Zackey Nujoma, son of former Namibian president Sam Nujoma.
The article detailed confusion over whether Pietro Palazzolo or his alleged crime boss brother, Vito Palazzolo, had been appointed a director of one of the companies that bought the licences.
Originally from Sicily, Vito Palazzolo was granted South African citizenship 13 years ago and has lived in Cape Town since.
Nearly two decades ago he served a sentence in Switzerland for laundering drug money.
He has appeared in local courts on a number of charges including fraud and forgery related to his South African citizenship.
Palazzolo was convicted, in absentia, two years ago by a tribunal in Palermo, Sicily, of associating with the Mafia and sentenced to nine years.
Last year Italy asked for him to be extradited and the justice department said earlier this year it would only begin processing the extradition request once his appeal against that conviction was finalised.
Grobler said the authorities should not think of organised crime in the conventional way of Italian bosses involved in drug smuggling and prostitution.
"It is far more sophisticated and they are moving from that image into one with more respectability where they appear to be involved in turning around diamonds."
Grobler, who spent 18 months investigating his award-winning story, said research had led him to believe that Mafia families from different nationalities used their political connections in Namibia to obtain diamond cutting licences.
Namibia was targeted because of its lucrative mining industry and easy access to influential people, while South Africa's lack of border control and its stable economy was ideal for money laundering operations, he said.
Although drugs, racketeering and prostitution was still the core part of organised crime, it was also currently being seen as the bottom rung of the business.
"I think they still set up deals but they don't get their hands dirty anymore."
Grobler said specialised units such as the Scorpions, whose future hangs in the balance, were ideal to deal with the now mature forms of organised crime.