U.N. Names Italian Expert on the Mafia to Its Top Anti crime Post

By CELESTINE BOHLEN

ROME, June 22 - One of Italv's top@experts on the Mafia has been @ appointed the United . Nations' leadini official on international crime.

P'mo Arlacchi, who is also a memher of the Italian Senate, will become Under Setretary General Eind directhe organizati

tor of on's Vienna of-

fice@, . where the United Nations antidritgprogram and others are based.

' 'Ile appointment of Senator Arliacc@i is an integral part of the Secretary General's effort to strengthen the capacity of the United Nations to address in a coherent and systematic w4y, eireats to the stability of society ar'is . ing from transnational crime in all its manifestations - from drug trafficking and money laundering to international terrorism," Fred Eckhard, the spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan, said on Friday.

A sociologist and the author of several books on Italy's powerful criminal organizations, Mr. Arlacchi I , 1 ..@.46 has been closely involved

widr.'It@lian law enforcement in its air t war against organized crime,

w@ has achieved remarkable sucyears, particularly an Mafia.

als, and his proposthe United Nations' fight against organhim the job against a c field of candidates. interview in his office at the Senate, where he has represented Florence since 1995 as a member of

Party of the Democratic Left after serving one term in the lower house, Mr. Arlacchi said his duties would include investigating financial empires suspected of thriving on illegal profits.

"We don't have an international body to follow what is widely recognized as a weak point in the international system," he said. "There is no international office that deals, systematically or globally, with these subjects. We need to elaborate a system to deal with the-big problem of tax havens, for instance."

A striking example of the dangers

of shady enterprises that go unregulated and unchecked is Albania, which descended into near anarchy this spring after the collapse of pyramid investment schemes.

"This is an example of how money laundering and corruption combined to destroy the savings of a whole country,' Mr. Arlacchi said. "Today there are a number of countries with wild capitalist markets operating without regulations. And yet if globalization is to be a positive phenomenon, it must have a strong basis. Otherwise, it could be negative, and dangerous."

He noted that the United Nations, with a 1988 anti-drug agreement signed by more than 120 nations, already has one instrument available to pursue global investigations of "dirty" money. That convention requires signers to abolish bank serecy laws that can help hide drugtrafficking profits, and to contibute a percentage of assets seized from drug-trading organizations to the United Nations office of Drug Conltjrol Prevention, which Mr. Arlacchi 11,111 now head.

"The idea is to take up all the levers available to us," he said.