How Much Money Does The Italian Mafia Make A Year

The Mafia Is Italia's Biggest Business

Mafia's business interests infiltrate the tourism, restaurant industries.

ROME, November. 12, 2008 -- Organized crime is the biggest business organisation in Italy, according to the latest study by the country's shopkeepers association, Confesercenti.

That Italy's mafias do a booming business organisation, particularly the drug-related variety, is common knowledge. But the effect on the country's legitimate businesses such equally tourism and food production had not been as clear until the Confesercenti released the figures, which are staggering.

Italy's four organized-criminal offence syndicates -- Sicily'southward Cosa Nostra, the Camorra in Naples, Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, and the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia -- together make upwardly a "huge property visitor with a total [sales] turnover of near 130 billion euros [near $165 billion] and profits approaching 70 billion euros [nigh $90 billion]," after investments and expenses, according to the written report.

They are, effectively, the biggest company in Italy. "Everyday, organized law-breaking takes some 250 1000000 euros (about $317.5 1000000) away from retailers and businessmen," the study said. "The equivalent of 10 1000000 euros [about $12.seven one thousand thousand] an hour, or 160,000 euros [almost $203,000] a infinitesimal."

Drug trafficking is withal the main source of income for organized law-breaking, bringing in 59 billion euros a twelvemonth, or about $75 billion. That's followed by what's known in Italy as "ecomafia," or the illegal disposal of waste material, which contributed to the recent garbage crisis in Naples.

Loan-sharking is third. Information technology is a more recent activity for organized crime but, in a short fourth dimension, it has become its biggest source of income from the concern sector and it continues to grow, according to the report.

"The number of businessmen who accept fallen victim to this crime has risen to some 180,000 and the offer of loans at high interest rates has created a [sales] turnover of around 15 billion euros [near $nineteen billion] for organized crime," the study noted

Extortion comes next, in the class of the "pizzo" -- as protection money is chosen -- extorted past the mob from businesses big and small, nether the threat of ruin, arson and physical impairment. This branch of the business is non growing, yet, simply only considering of "a general reject in the number of legal enterprises and a rise in those controlled by mafia organizations."

The mobsters' business interests have also gone beyond the "traditional" extortion, contraband and drug dealing and infiltrated deeper into important sectors of the legitimate economy such every bit tourism, restaurants and food product.

Roberto Saviano, the best-selling writer of "Gomorrah," which is about the Camorra -- the law-breaking organization that operates in the area around Naples -- told ABC News in a recent interview that the Camorra is present in every kind of commercial activity.

"It is, in a higher place all, a business organization," Saviano told ABC News.com, "in the sense that information technology is fabricated up of managers, managers in the cement industry, the transport industry, managers in the manufacture of bread making, of pots and pans, of milk production."

The commercial empire of the combined mafias is worth most 92 billion euros (about $117 billion) a year, or 6 percent of the economic system, according to Confesercenti.

Mafia businesses are fix like whatsoever other company, with a business structure that includes a CEO, managers, department heads and consultants.

The written report, which gets its information from the Confesercenti'southward large network of members, fifty-fifty gives estimates on salaries of mafia members.

A "Association main of CEO" earns a monthly salary that goes from 10,000 to 40,000 euros a month (or about $12,700 to $50,800), while, at the lower cease, drug pushers and dissonance operatives (protection-money collectors) brand 1,500 euros per calendar month, or about $1,900.

The going rates for protection money are besides spelled out: In Sicily and Naples, construction sites fork out up to ten,000 euros (about $12,700) a month to avoid sabotage, supermarkets pay iii,000 to 5,000 (virtually $3,800 to $6,300) a month and small grocery stores will pay 200 to 500 euros (about $250 to $630). A simple stall at a market place gets abroad with a few euros a twenty-four hour period.

The ongoing economic crisis fuels the beast. "The economical crisis makes the Mafia even more dangerous, " Marco Venturi, the chairman of Confesercenti, told reporters in presenting the study.

When banks tighten their lending, businesses turn to the mob, he noted, which uses the economic system'southward weakness and doubt "to strengthen its position." Companies that are financially weak are easier to buy or influence.

Italian republic's successive governments vow to fight organized crime with forcefulness, and Italian republic'southward latest prime number government minister recently sent the regular army to Naples to enforce police and order in the midst of a clan war.

But the new report suggests that much more needs to be done on the financial front to fight the mob's highly lucrative business organization activities.

At the same fourth dimension, though, piddling victories are chalked up in some mafia-ridden parts of Italia.

This past weekend, a small farm hotel, or "agriturismo," named Terre di Corleone opened in Altofonte, in Sicily. The hotel was created from two buildings that were confiscated from Mafia boss Toto Riina, on the site of ane of the Mafia's most gruesome crimes.

Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 11-year-old son of a Mafia turncoat, was kidnapped in 1993 and held hostage there for 779 days before finally beingness killed and dissolved in acid, in an attempt to force his father to retract his testimony.

"Giuseppe won today," his female parent Franca told the media at the inauguration of the hotel. "Because I think that information technology is thanks to him that the mafia has been exterminated, if not totally, then at least by 70 percent. Giuseppe must help united states of america all."