Camorra: The Birth of Cattleya Rent Amid Family Quarrels and Hidden Financiers

While Casapesenna was for years the beating heart of the Zagaria clan's military power, Tenerife has become its financial engine room. Thanks to the findings of the European Investigative Order, investigators have uncovered the corporate "set" assembled by Filippo Capaldo.

These are not empty boxes, but real businesses that serve to mix illicit proceeds with daily takings, making the money practically indistinguishable.

While Filippo consolidates his real estate empire, brothers Nicola and Mario Francesco live with their backs to the ground. In 2017, the decision is made: they must flee Casapesenna.

Mario Francesco Capaldo: "Mate, Nicola and I have actually decided. We're going to Tenerife in September! Through that... he slipped out... Here, the only risk is that they'll lump us together and give us ten years for nothing!"

Thus was born Cattleya Rent, an electric vehicle rental company. The facilitator was once again Alfonso Ottimo, who found them a financier: Carmine Farina. But the Capaldo brothers were nervous. They argued in front of Farina, jeopardizing their investment.

Alfonso Ottimo: “You need to be more in tune! If someone comes here to put money on you and sees you arguing in the morning… what must they think? In the morning! Imagine what happens when you're working!”

The financier Carmine Farina

To open Cattleya Rent (an electric vehicle rental business in Adeje), the brothers needed financial backing. Alfonso Ottimo, the clan's facilitator, organized everything. He found the financier in Carmine Farina, a man with a criminal record for counterfeiting and ties to organized crime.

The 2017 Tenerife inspection is straight out of a crime storybook. Excellent: “If they do it right, it works. There are tons of people! Playa del Duque is spectacular, it seems like another world. But I tell those two [the Capaldo brothers]: you shouldn't start living that life there, otherwise you won't get any work. You have to stay calm and polite.”

But the brothers are arguing. They argue in front of their financier, Farina, over money and management issues, infuriating Ottimo: "If someone comes here to invest in you and sees you arguing the very morning before you start... what's he supposed to think?"

The Spanish “washing machine“

Despite the friction, the business is taking off. An "ecological" business to launder Campania's dirtiest money. Preliminary Investigating Judge Fabio Provvier, who on March 30 signed a 600-page precautionary measure that landed 23 people in prison, is blunt: "Capaldo has no legitimate business activity in the past years... his income is nonexistent." Yet, in Tenerife, Filippo lives like a tycoon. The conclusion is clear: every bar opened, every car rented, every apartment sold in Tenerife is a piece of the Camorra that has shed its skin, transforming itself into a "legal economy" in the eyes of Europe.

The Zagaria clan is this today: an octopus that has replaced concrete with luxury restaurants and waste, speaking Italian and Spanish, but continuing to feed the families of Casapesenna with the precision of a Swiss watch. An empire resting on the golden sands of Tenerife, but with its roots firmly planted in the mud of Caserta's extortion rackets.

(in the photo the Cattleya headquarters in Tenerife and the brothers Filippo, Nicola and Mario Francesco Capaldo with Alfonso Ottimo)