In November 2023, Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, gathered the country’s top prosecutors at the headquarters of the powerful anti-mafia and anti-terrorism directorate, the DNAA. The far-right leader flattered them, boasting about the Italian judiciary’s global prestige.
“Italy used to export mafia,” she said. “Now it exports anti-mafia.”
She was trying to smooth over tensions around her government’s plans to limit the powers of organised crime investigators. Yet there was more to Meloni’s statement than she perhaps realised.
