
The death of Ervis Martinaj (or perhaps, given that no body has yet been found, it would be better to speak of disappearance) and the executions within his circle, which culminated in the triple murder at the Fushë-Kruja overpass a months ago, may mark the beginning of a chain of laundering accounts within the Albanian criminal world.
The king of the gambling halls is actually thought to have been the victim of rival gangs worried about his unstoppable growth and his constant attacks.
In short, Martinaj would have broken the delicate balances that regulate the relations between different groups, limit the relative spheres of influence and thus allow the orderly development of different businesses in the world of the illegal economy.
When this happens, in any system of organized crime, what Italian experts call the "Mafia War" unfolds.
What is a mafia war? It is basically a bloody clash of power that serves precisely to restore those balances, when for some reason they are broken or no longer shared.
In the end it will be known who wins and who loses, who commands, with what alliances and what rights and who, defeated, must give up his business and territories and retire.
In Italy, the Sicilian mafia group "Cosa Nostra" has experienced many conflicts of this type.
The ones that have marked its history were basically two: in both cases it was the clash between the suburbs and the control center of the Commission, i.e. the management center of the organization.
The first mafia war broke out in the early 1960s when the "nobles of Palermo" of the families of Tommaso Buscetta (he would later be the first major penitent to allow Judge Giovanni Falcone to organize the trial against "Cosa Nostra ") started the new course by putting "Cosa Nostra" at the center of the big international drug traffic and getting rid of the old bosses scattered around Sicily.
The clash ended with just over 100 dead.
But the big mafia war was the second.
What was fought between 1981 and 1984 between the clans of the Sicilian suburbs (of the "Viddani", the peasants) of Corleone led by Totò Riina against the Bontade, Badalamenti, Buscetta and Inzerillo families (the latter related to the Gambino family of New York) of Palermo.
The Palermitans were richer and more powerful, but the Corleones were bloodthirsty and ready for anything.
The war broke out on April 23, 1981 with the murder, on Riina's orders, of Stefano Bontate.
As he was returning home from a birthday party, he was attacked while driving an Alfa Romeo Giulietta 2000 model and killed by a group armed with AK-47s and a barrage of bullets.
On May 11, Salvatore Inzerillo, known as Totuccio, head of the "family" of Passo di Rigano and with many "cousins" on the other side of the Atlantic, in Cherry Hill, i.e. the Gambino family, was killed.
The other two bosses of the Palermo faction, Buscetta and Badalamenti, probably manage to avoid death by chance, only because they are out of the country these days.
The reaction of the Palermo mafia was delayed. The clans of the capital were much wealthier than the Corleones, but were not ready to face the war.
Riina, on the other hand, organized a veritable army, ready to kill and perhaps even die for him.
In the months that followed, around 100 people believed to be close to the Bontate and Inzerillo families were killed.
The conflict continued with murder until December 1984. In the end, there would be almost 1 thousand dead.
Among these are representatives of state institutions such as General Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa (the man who had defeated the Red Brigades), the communist deputy Pio La Torre (who had signed the law creating the crime of association with the mafia and the strong prison regime for mafiosi ).
The Corleones won that war, thus establishing a regime of absolute control over "Cosa Nostra".
They managed to openly challenge the Italian state by killing magistrates and policemen and organizing attacks throughout Italy.
Despite the arrest of the military leaders of the organization, the Corleones are still at the head of "Cosa Nostra" with the leader, the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro.