Report: NATO rented mob-owned villas

NAPLES, Italy, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- NATO personnel based in Italy had for years been renting homes indirectly owned by members of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, authorities say.

A crackdown by the Carabinieri, or military police, in the Naples area revealed that 40 villas allegedly being used as money laundering investments by the Camorra and confiscated by police were being rented to U.S. military personnel working with NATO, The Times of London reported Monday.

Quoting reports in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, The Times said in one instance, American NATO officers had been renting a villa near Naples for years that belonged indirectly to Antonio Iovine, the chieftain of the Bianco-Corvino clan of the Camorra.

"Last year we succeeded in sequestering $125 million of assets belonging to the Bianco-Corvino clan, including about 50 villas," Col. Carmelo Burgio of the Carabinieri told the newspaper. "We then discovered that 40 of these were rented out to NATO personnel. Most of them are still living there, with the difference that the rent ... is now paid into a state fund."

A military spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to comment, The Times said.