Mafia Sits at the Table basketball sponsorship trivialises crime, says Italy

Casademont Zaragoza, pictured in a game against Covina Granada in May, said it had not received the latter but noted ‘there are video games and streets in Italy that are named after the mafia’. Photograph: Álex Cámara/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Italy’s ambassador to Madrid has publicly admonished a Spanish basketball club for accepting sponsorship from a restaurant chain called The Mafia Sits at the Table, saying the name trivialises organised crime and the human and economic damage it inflicts.

The ambassador, Giuseppe Buccino Grimaldi, made his “discomfort” and “confusion” plain in an open letter to the president of the Casademont Zaragoza club posted on the embassy website on Monday.