ROME (AP) – Gianfranco Romeo sits at a table at his trattoria off the Pantheon, casting scorn over the idea that he’s a frontman for a feared mafia clan.
“I always had a passion for restaurant work, I began as a dishwasher,” Romeo told The Associated Press at Il Barroccio, as pizza-makers prepared to fire up the oven and shovel in the pies for the evening crowd of tourists.
Romeo is among several people under investigation for suspected false property registration in one of a growing number of investigations in which mobsters are suspected of systematically buying up Roman tourist restaurants to launder cocaine profits, allegedly installing people like Romeo as figurehead owners.
Romeo contended bitterly that investigators were targeting him and others merely because they are natives of Calabria, the southern region that is home to the ‘ndrangheta, one of the most feared global crime syndicates. In seizing restaurants from hard-working people like himself, he said, authorities are essentially alleging that all Calabrians in Rome are crooks.
He’s looking forward to his day in a court so he can ask prosecutors: “Why do you say I’m a figurehead when I paid with my own money?”