Pitch

The villa used to belong to Nicola Arena, one of the most powerful boss of the 'Ndrangheta, and then was confiscated on 14th October 1997. On 20th August 2001, the State Property Agency sent notices of eviction. A decree of 29th March 2002 from the State Property Agency established the transfer of the confiscated property to the Municipality for social purposes. However, in 2012, a different project was approved for its redevelopment. It is planned to create a climatic colony for disabled people, in aderence to the objective of social inclusion. The confiscated asset, even though its restructuring times have been respected, was never assigned by the former mayor Gianluca Bruno, and since 2012 and it has been vandalized several times.

In 2018 the prefect Mannino orders the assignment of 15 confiscated assets. These include the vandalized villa of Nicola Arena at the Kroton Community Onlus. In the 2021 document on the state of confiscated assets it is said that the association has presented a project of national value and is awaiting for the results. Actually, no project has been presented because the confiscated asset had already received fundings and was not even included in the planning of the Pnrr. The story of this property, as the journalist Antonio Anastasi says,  is another one of delays and noncompliance, with the shadow of the clan’s pressure in the background, a scenery already seen in these latitudes, when you have to deal with ‘Ndrangheta’s confiscated assets.

In a context characterized by a high crime rate, such as that in Isola di Capo Rizzuto, what is proposed is the birth of a monitoring community, on the model of Common of the Abele Group. A collaboration pact, based on the principle of horizontal subsidiarity, a widespread vigilance that supports, from below, even with our presence as students, the care of the common good, to facilitate the process of regeneration of this confiscated property. All integrated, in this context, with the provisions of the Integrity Pacts, promoted by the European Commission, as an anti-corruption tool for the monitoring of public contracts. In the light of above, the value of a confiscated asset must be dynamic and proactive in order to create new alternatives on the territory itself.