Surpise, surprise.
The Mafia is Italy's biggest industry according to the annual report on organized crime by the business federation Confesercenti.
Mafia rackets accounted for 140 billion euros -- that's $204 billion -- or 7% of Italy's GDP last year as reported by AGI, and Mafia victims included about one million or 20% of the country's businessmen who have been extortion, loansharking and robbery targets as reported by ANSA.
Unfortunately, the credit crisis in Italy has made businesses especially vulnerable to the Mafia as reported by Adnkronos: "out of desperation they turn to mobsters who provide loans at crippling interest rates."
The mobsters got a lot of cash -- 65 billion euros or $83 billion -- to lend as reported by ABC News, and they increasingly are using white collar professionals as fronts as reported by Reuters:
Old style gangsters handing out cash in bars and pool halls had been replaced by apparently respectable bankers, lawyers or notaries, the report said. "This is extortion with a clean face," it added. "Through their professions, they know the mechanisms of the legal credit market and they often know the financial position of their victims perfectly."
The Mafia "controls everything from gambling to construction and the disposal of industrial and household waste," and has "also moved into new areas of business such as public health, transport and logistics" as reported by The Telegraph.
Italy's four major mafia groups are Cosa Nostra in Sicily, 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, Camorra in Naples, and Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia.
The mob's power in Italy now extends beyond the south to the more prosperous northern regions, and the infestation is worse than the bubonic plague which decimated Europe in the Middle Ages. Black Hand. Black Death. It all comes from vermin.
God bless this wicked world.
One can only hope that with all the money they make that they use it for good one day. The same thing that is happening in Italy is sadly happening in other countries, but in different forms. I think it is mostly political corruption, and heads of state being in bed with large corporations. In countries with rainforests and great biodiversity, it is the so-called "timber mafia" in collusion with governments that take bribes for allowing them to clear the forests. Just like in Italy it is the Ndrangheta dumping nuclear waste in the ocean and the Camorra poisoning their own land with toxic watse, all in partnership with major companies and corrupt offcials, and all for the almighty dollar. These people only care about power.
Posted by: Clinton Fussell | 01/11/2012 at 01:35 AM