Hello, long time reader, first time poster.

I was wondering if anyone has any good sources on the Unione Corse? I found some information on the past threads of this forum, but nothing very recent. I can't even find books written about this form of OC except the ones of the French connection. I wonder, are there no street guys in Corsica who know what's going on like there are in US?

My girlfriend is Corsican and she knows absolutely nothing about anything going on there. Yet it's like Sicily, almost everyone has family members in it. Well, this is fully an assumption, but when she knows a person who got shot in the face in a hospital, I suspect foul play.

This forum is really great by the way!

This probably isn't very helpful to you...but there was this French guy named Albert Spaggiari who master minded an amazing bank heist and then escaped from jail before he was sentenced. He had to get some sort of heavy gangsters in France to help him get the heist done and pay some tribute. It's just an interesting story about French crime, but not very specific to French OC.

There recently have been written a lot of French books on the Corsican mob. Search for authors like Jacques Follorou, Christian Lestavel and Thierry Colombie. Most of the books are on the activities of the Corsican mobs in more recent times, not so much on the French Connection. "Les Parrains Corses" by Jacques Follorou however is a book that gives a good historic as well as contemporary overview of Corsican organized crime. All of the books are in French though.

Even though they aren't as important anymore in the international heroin trade as they used to be in the days of the French Connection, the activities of several Corsican clans are extremely entrenched on the island and in the South of France. This year the murder rate on the island was a bit down (save for a local official that got killed), but 2008-2013 saw quite a lot of casualties due to widespread vendettas between criminal clans. In Marseille the Corsican mob is still the most powerful and well-entrenched form of organized crime. They work a lot with local North African (Algerians for the most part) gangsters over there. For instance Marseille's most well known Algerian crime boss Farid Berrahma was killed by several locally based Corsican mobsters over a business dispute. The Hornec family -an extended Paris-based organized crime clan of settled Yéniche travellers who were often dubbed the "Mafia of Paris"- also had a lot of connections with the Corsicans in Marseille. So even though their international presence has waned, they're still extremely well entrenched throughout the criminal underworld of France.

Have to say Corsica is an extremely beautiful place however and as with all ethnic groups the criminals are a minority. It's safe for tourists and the Corsican people themselves are very hospitable. They're a proud people though, they've historically resented being a part of France and don't like to be called "French" neither do they like being called "Italian". Ethnically they're most likely a mix between Sardinians and Northern Italians (Tuscans for that matter).

Thank you! Great info.

Take a look at 2009 French movie, a Prophet even if it doesn't speak directly of the corsicans mafia, however, it shows the power that still has in the prisons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prophet

Yes, I've seen the movie. By the way, does anyone happen to know what the current relationship with the nationalists and mob is? I get the impression that the two groups have had some connections but the same time nationalists have spoken against the mob, like here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...me-1463291.html

It is true Corsicans are one of the most important mob groups in France.
They indeed killed a guy named Farid Berrhama (is specialty was barbecues which means he would burn is victims in the trunk of a car).
For the 20 or 30 last years, the corsican mob has been dominated by a group called la Brise de Mer (this was the name of the bar were they would hang out). Members a la Brise de Mer used to be friends, but they divided in the 2000's. One of its members boasted of killing over 50 people.
There was a series called mafiosa about a woman becoming the leader of a corsican gang. Some kind of cheap sopranos...
The fourth season is about her gang taking control of "cercle de jeux" (some kind of casinos) in Paris. Interestingly, two of the actors were involved in the same kind of operation in real life, and were interrogated by the police.
The murder rate seams higher than in amercican mob, but not the same level as italian mob.
Sorry for my English I am French did the best I could.

Your English is fine man Thanks for the info. I saw the first two seasons of Mafiosa. Entertaining but nothing that impressive. The previous years the murder rate in Corsica was higher than in Sicily, but I'm not too sure about Calabria or the Naples areas though. 2014 was a calmer year for Corsica again

Just looking at a map of Corsica, anyone can see that Corsica is closer to Italy than it is to France. Could it be that the Unione Corse is really another form of Southern Italian OC?

edit: They are clearly NOT Italian.

Corsica became part of France in 1768 (and had previously been ruled by the Republic of Genoa since 1284), whereas most historians say that the mafia did not begin in Sicily and the South of Italy until the early 1800s.

Nonetheless, there does seem to be a kind of "intuitive" relationship between Corsican & Southern Italian organized crime

Does Sardinia have a mafia?

I would like to know that also. I thought about that (Sardinia).

Since I made the last post above, I took the time to browse through the BB's posts on the topic. That said, I would not now classify Unione Corse as "Southern Italian OC".

DomC I remember reading that the Camorra had their hooks in Sardegna. Not sure about the mafia.

I just read somewhere that the Camorra originated in Sardinia, but who really knows?

Supposedly the indigenous criminal organization in Sardinia is called "Anomina (Anonmina?) Sarda", but they aren't OC in the sense that they stay out of politics.

What I really want to know, and I went through just about every BB post on the topic for the last ten years, is what is the structure of L'Unione Corse?

Going back through ten years of posts and no one can mention it.

If you go to Gangster's Inc, I think that website has a grand total of...wait for it...ONE article/entry on the Unione Corse.

Good luck Alfa, looks like it may really be a TRUE secret society. Whatever you do find should be interesting though if you are up for the challenge. Something different to learn about is always nice.

With the "Anomina Sarda" they probably mean the various, mostly individually working robbers and kidnappers that come from Sardinia. Sardinia doesn't even really have any gang-like organized crime groups, let alone some kind of "mafia". Individual criminals, sure, but nothing of a long term cooperative criminal gang.

Corsica is extremely close to Sardinia. Both islands have their differences, but also many similarities. The tribe the population supposedly descended from, the Corsi, are actually native to Northern Sardinia and probably were a Sardinian tribe. Corsica throughout history has also had a large influx of people from Liguria. In general I would say Corsicans are closer to Italians than they are to French people, but they would probably describe themselves as just "Corsicans" first and foremost.

I'm not extremely well-versed on the "Corsican mafia", but from what I read I think they're more structured like the Camorra: into different clans or gangs consisting of criminals that come from the same area. The Bastia area for instance had the "Brise de Mer" gang that was named after the bar where most of the members frequently met, as Martial already stated a few posts above.

To everyone on this thread, yes this is truly a 'secret' society, the Unione Corse.

Piquing my curiosity about them even further is noticing that they are featured in one of the Classic James Bond films that recently aired here in NYC.

Maybe they are so secretive, that their mythic quality allowed them to be featured in a fantasy film about a super secret agent. But they are more than mythical. They exist.

On Wikipedia, there is a grand total of...SEVEN made men alleged to belong to the Unione Corse. That's it.

For me, the most interesting of them is Mr Lucien Emile Conein. This guy was mobbed up with OSS (CIA), DEA, and the US Army also. Who was he working for? Can't tell.

This is just far too sophisticated/complex.

Anyone getting involved with any kind of dope has lost their mind.

Here is Lucien Conein himself. He sounds and looks like a Washington DC insider from the Southern US, and not like a member of the Corsican Mafia.

It's hard to believe, watching this, that he was a member of the Unione Corse:

Unione Corse?


According to this, Lucien was made an honorary member of the Corsican Brotherhood while helping the Unione Corse and France fight the Nazis.

Only an Honorary Cosican Mafioso

Seems like the Corsican's are at it again after a long quiet period. A guy just got shot in the street in Bastia.

https://twitter.com/FranceBleuRCFM/statu...p;utm_medium=fb