12/05/2026
The pattern repeats itself, with a precision that leaves no room for doubt. In Catania and its surrounding area, the past week produced two distinct but inseparable episodes: the discovery of two illegal stables in the San Cristoforo district and a clandestine horse race in Palagonia — reported by activist Enrico Rizzi — with pistol shots fired and Kalashnikovs brandished by spectators as a routine display of power. Within hours of the video being posted on social media, police identified two individuals responsible for the clandestine race: two men in their forties located in the San Cristoforo area of Catania, referred to the Caltagirone Prosecutor's Office. During the checks, officers also found two colts used in the race: they were being kept in two illegal stable in San Cristoforo, with no microchip. This is not the first time Palagonia has appeared in these reports: in July 2020, a horse died during a clandestine race in that very territory.
A few hours before the race, a separate operation was triggered by a call to the emergency number: a woman spotted two ponies harnessed to carriages, forced to move through heavy traffic near the Catania cemetery. One of them, visibly frightened, was violently yanked by the driver in an attempt to make it move forward. The woman reported everything in precise detail. Officers responded swiftly.
The Mounted Squad of the Catania Police Headquarters, working in coordination with veterinarians from the ASP Veterinary Service, traced the chain back to two stables in the San Cristoforo district: illegal structures, lacking a company registration code, never reported to the health authority. The ponies had no microchips and had never been tested for equine infectious anaemia. The animals were placed under a sanitary order and transferred to an authorised facility. Those responsible received administrative fines totalling €11,000; the carriage drivers were fined for violations of the Highway Code. These are all pieces of the same supply chain that IHP has been documenting for years.
The detail of weapons on open display is not a peripheral element: it is the cultural and criminal signature of the phenomenon. Clandestine horse races, as IHP has repeatedly documented and as confirmed by the Parliamentary Commission on Eco-Mafias, are not deviant folklore. They are an instrument for asserting mafia power, collecting illegal bets, and controlling territory.
The logic of the system
Read together, the two episodes confirm a structure that is by now well known. Illegal stables — unregistered, unmonitored, untraceable — are the logistical hub of the phenomenon: the place where animals are kept entirely off any registry, ready to be used in races or, when they are no longer useful, channelled into equally opaque circuits, often ending up in clandestine slaughter. The absence of microchips is obviously no oversight: it is a deliberate choice, because an untraced animal is an animal that can disappear without a trace.
IHP commends the work of the State Police and the ASP veterinarians, and in particular acknowledges the value of the civilian tip-off that triggered the San Cristoforo operation: active citizen participation is an integral part of any effective strategy against this phenomenon.
But the core issue remains unchanged: without a structural reform of the equine registry, without genuine traceability of ownership transfers, without systematic inspections of holding facilities, every raid produces only a partial result. The supply chain always finds a way through, because it operates in the vast grey area that an incomplete bureaucracy makes available to it. Catania, a Video and the Ghost Stables: How the Illegal Race Network Was Uncovered