Silvio Berlusconi made a bold claim a few weeks back that he was preparing to launch a plan to eradicate the entire Italian Mafia. Indefinitely. So it would be logical to assume that the 26 Mafia arrests made this week in Sicily and various U.S. cities were somehow linked to this plan, right? Wrong. The crackdown was actually part of ongoing joint investigative efforts by U.S. and Italian authorities that began in 2005, and had nothing to do with the Italian PM’s hyperbolic and insincere anti-Mafia statements.

A series of raids led to the arrest of 20 people in Sicily who were charged with various extortion, drug and violence crimes, and members of the notorious Gambino family were snatched up in the U.S. The most important arrest was that of 41-year old Robert Settineri in Miami Beach, an Italian national who’s allegedly been an important go-between for Sicilian and American mob factions.

“The Mafia in Italy could live though the work of Settineri in the United States, a senior Italian official said. “That’s why he was so dangerous.” Attempts to hack away at the strong transatlantic ties between Italian and American mafia groups were officially coordinated in 2005 with the creation of the FBI’s Pantheon Project, which also investigates organized Albanian crimes.

Crucial to the investigation of the Settineri has been the FBI’s use of wiretaps and surveillance – measures Berlusconi loathes when they’re taken in his own country. Just two weeks ago, the furious PM said Italy was becoming a “police state” when Italian authorities issued an arrest warrant for one of party’s senators on allegations of – you guessed it – Mafia-related money laundering.  Don’t these Italian authorities know that the only real way to get rid of the Mafia is to stop airing "The Sopranos?"