The Town Council has resigned to protest reports its members are suspected of ties with the Mafia. The councilmen followed the lead of the mayor, Paolo Scarna. He quit after a nephew was suspected of killing a judge last month who was ruling on whether purported Mafia members should be kept under house arrest, news reports said Friday. The resignations of the 32 council members came amid reports that police were investigating local politicians for possible links with organized crime. The town of 25,000 people, one of the poorest in Sicily, is in the province of Agrigento, an area that over the last few years has seen many slayings linked to the mob, including the murder of two anti-Mafia magistrates. Italy's top anti-Mafia fighter, Magistrate Domenico Sica, has looked into possible Mafia activity in the town. In Palermo, meanwhile, officials announced on Friday that police have arrested 12 people suspected of drug-trafficking and money-laundering. The arrests came in a nationwide sweep that began Thursday night and involved searches of houses and business offices in Palermo, Rome, Milan and the northern cities of Como and Asti, police officials said. Those arrested were held for investigation of suspected organized crime ties that involved drug dealing and money laundering. Investigators said they were aided by the testimony of a former mobster-turned-informer and by the discovery in January of a ledger that police say contained entries on Mafia financial transactions. The ledger was found in the house of a fugitive suspected Mafia boss. The drugs appeared to have moved directly from Turkey to Sicily and the drug profits appeared to have been laundered through Swiss banks, the Italian news agency AGI reported.
