The most powerful clans of the Camorra have used the pandemic as a tool for a new social affirmation towards the weakest classes hit by the economic and social crisis resulting from the crisis.
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It is one of the most worrying passages of the Dia's six-monthly report, which reports on the criminal situation from June to December 2021. It is no coincidence that the clan messengers who went around the alleys of Naples to support those in economic difficulty with food parcels "created consensus". The two major clans in Naples, the Secondigliano Alliance, in agreement with the Casalesi, and the Mazzarella.
The Camorra in fact “has its roots in the socio-cultural chasms where the phenomena of school dropout, unemployment and juvenile deviance constitute variables of a complex system from which criminal actors draw strength and resources to the detriment of the population’s trust in local institutions and the State”.
But not only because there has been an increase in murders and shootings among people, the famous stese, but also because arrests for Camorra crimes are increasing "however, the criminal phenomena in Campania, particularly in the province of Naples, are characterized by peculiarities such that they cannot be approached only as emergencies of public order or safety, effectively relegating the scope of responsibility to the narrow confines of judicial and police repression".
The Camorra is no longer “fragmented into many small groups in chaotic opposition”. In its place, what is emerging is increasingly clear “a real ‘system’ based on stratified and complex decision-making levels, as well as on a criminal structure consolidated on the territory and equipped with a directory for the management and coordination of subordinate groups”.
Camorra, for the Dia less divisions and more and more 'system'
This is the new image of organized crime in Campania that emerges from the latest half-yearly report by the DIA according to which "the shrewd ability to generate huge profits even through activities with low judicial risk has long transformed the main Camorra cartels into real business holdings that are integral parts of the legal economy supported by stratified relational systems based on personal ties, very often kinship, and connivance in large sectors of business and public administration".
The members themselves speak of a 'system': "a management coordination structure that the Camorra organizations give themselves in order to reach common objectives aimed exclusively at the pursuit of illicit enrichment". Even if, "on the margins of the large criminal cartels and of that world in which mafia interests merge with those of business, the 'Camorra of the alleys and the stese' persists, of conflicts between gangs that dispute control of the traditional illicit markets, of racketeering and drugs".
Alarm from the DIA, 'this is how the Camorra infiltrates the economy'
The Camorra, like all Italian criminal cartels, in recent years have made fewer "sensational displays of violence" and have looked more at interests in "low judicial risk" businesses. Even if "the prerequisite remains control of the territory, of course. But above all with corruption, money laundering, the approach of entrepreneurs in difficulty to acquire their assets, the pollution of a healthy economy".
The latest half-yearly report of the DIA once again returns the image of "silent" criminal groups that no longer limit themselves to the "parasitic plundering" of the production network "but become businesses". A further confirmation of the "strategic nature of the attack on mafia associations also from an asset perspective". In six months, 165 million were seized, 108 million confiscated; 373 anti-mafia interdictions, 69 thousand reports for suspicious transactions. If on the one hand the alarm concerns large investments, such as those envisaged by the PNRR, it is necessary to protect important events from the aims of mafia-style crime, such as the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.
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“The ability to generate huge profits even through criminal activities with 'low judicial risk' that range from the traditional activities of smuggling and illegal gaming to online fraud and control of contracts, from judicial auctions, waste cycle and public and private construction to the new frontier of large-scale tax fraud, has in fact transformed the main Camorra cartels into real business holdings that are integral parts of the legal economy supported by layered relational systems based on personal ties, very often kinship, and connivance in large sectors of business and public administration”.
And not only because in the DIA half-yearly report presented by the Minister of the Interior and relating to the analysis of the phenomena of mafia-style organized crime in the second half of 2021 we still read: “All this can also be exemplified with what the affiliates themselves have called the “System”, i.e. a management coordination structure that the Camorra organizations give themselves in order to achieve common objectives aimed exclusively at pursuing illicit enrichment.
However, on the margins of the large criminal cartels and of that world in which mafia interests merge with those of business, the “camorra of the alleys and the stese” persists, of conflicts between gangs that compete for control of the traditional illicit markets, of racketeering and drugs. The economic power of criminal organizations, including those in Campania, is ensured mainly by drug trafficking”, the report underlines.
The Camorra 'Holding', Between Drugs and Low-Risk Profits
"The interest outside the region of the Campanian mafia groups is mainly directed towards drug trafficking and money laundering, with particular reference - the report states - to Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo and Molise. Abroad, among the countries most interested in the phenomenon, we note Spain, France, Holland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Romania; there are also contacts with Moroccan criminal organizations limited to the purchase of narcotics".
Article published on 3 October 2022 - 08:43
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