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12. The results of the interviews conducted with the most active prosecutor’s offices: the phenomenon and its preventionIt is possible to gain precise data on the prices paid to the passeurs for theirservices. This is because frontier crossing is a service furnished by a singleindividual, or at any rate by a single organisation. The cost paid to a passeur persmuggled crossing varies between € 150 and € 400 according to the route chosenand the nationality of the smuggled person.The above-mentioned difficulties concerning financial investigations conducted toidentify and/or or estimate profits also impede indictments for money laundering inrelation to migrant smuggling. Charges for this offence have not been brought byany of the Italian prosecutor’s offices most closely involved in the fight againstmigrant smuggling.Almost all prosecutor’s offices instead stressed the importance of seizure andconfiscation in combating this criminal phenomenon. Operations of this kind haveinvolved both money 358 and other mobile goods, mainly boats and vehicles, 359 andthey have dealt a heavy blow to the criminal organisations by depriving them of themeans necessary for their illicit activities.SUMMARYCHARACTERISTICS OF SMUGGLERSS1. Foreign nationality of the smugglers.2. ‘Ethnic’ criminal organisations: impenetrable from outside, with internal codesof silence strengthened by kinship bonds and localist relationships.3. Strong ties with the countries of origin.4. Foreign domicile of the heads of the smuggling organisation. The bosses neverenter Italy but reside in their country of origin.5. Criminal groups with (hierarchically) structured organisational models butflexible and fragmented in their actions (centralised direction coupled with aneffective peripheral organisation, i.e. comprising numerous micro-associationswhich are constantly created and disbanded to handle distinct phases of theprocess).6. Ability to intimidate others (violence, menaces, etc.).7. Powerful and locally rooted organisations enjoying high prestige.8. A business-like approach which implies collaboration with local criminalorganisations (although these continue to perform secondary roles).9. Involvement of Italian citizens for local logistical support.358 The main problem is the slowness of acquiring information on bank deposits. This gives the criminalstime to transfer their money elsewhere, so that all the effort has been made in vain.359 The prosecutor’s office of Lecce has seized and confiscated a large number of often sophisticatedrubber dinghies, when have then been used by the Italian police in various parts of the peninsula. Cars havealso been confiscated in Trieste.197