H/T Jari Leino on Twitter: “Without immigration, we wouldn’t know what the pizza mafia tastes like!”
Pizza mafia suspected of terrorizing restaurant world – giant list of charges is pouring into court today
Today at 9:48
Pizza mafia has been a well-known concept in the Oulu region for years. Today, members of the family are back in court.
An Oulu-based pizza family with Turkish background has been suspected of terrorizing the ethnic restaurant field across Finland for years. Other restaurateurs have been threatened and blackmailed on the basis of public information so that they do not step on the toes of the family and threaten its business. The family’s restaurants are still in operation.
In the Oulu region, the concept of pizza mafia has been known for years. Members of the family have numerous convictions for various crimes, but also non-prosecuting decisions have been made in cases of suspected extortion.
The concept of pizza mafia was born around 2015 when the National Bureau of Investigation saw signs of organised crime in the family’s activities. Ari Kouva, then head of the investigation, said the word mafia in Kaleva.
“The action is similar to foreign mafias that agree with each other, who can do and what they can do,” Kouva described at the time.
The victim, who has been caught in the mafia’s pliers, has told Iltalehti how intimidation of violence and stalking near the courtyard has not yet intimidated him, but calling his wife a whore and threatening her with rape in earshot of his children has angered him.
Now the heavy suspicions of crime in the pizza family are being dealt with in the District Court of Oulu.
The accused are two male representatives of the family, two Finnish women, and a deputy judge from Oulu who has been assisting the Turks for a long time. All defendants have denied guilty of the crimes that are under investigation.
Little is known about the exact nature of the crimes of suspects yet. It remains to be seen how much will be available at Thursday’s preparatory session.
