Italian Mafia Boosted Revenue by 25% in 2005, SOS Impresa Says

Italian crime syndicates, including the Sicilian Mafia, boosted their revenue by 25 percent last year, according to SOS Impresa, a Rome-based group that coordinates businesses that reject mob extortion.

Italy's four main crime organizations drained 35 billion euros ($44.2 billion) from the legal economy in 2005, up from 28 billion euros the previous year, SOS Impresa said in its annual report. The figures exclude drugs and arms sales.

"This isn't just a regional problem; it's a big problem for the entire country,'' said Marco Minniti, deputy minister of the interior, today after the presentation of the document. "The presence of the mafia makes Italy a weaker country.''

Incomes in Italy's south, known as the Mezzogiorno, remained two-thirds those of the rest of the country over the last two decades because of organized crime, according to the Censis research institute in Rome. Average unemployment in the south is four times that of the north, topping 20 percent in some areas and reaching 38 percent for 15- to 24-year-olds, the government statistics office says. There are three main crime syndicates in Italy, all rooted in the Mezzogiorno. The Camorra thrives in Naples and the region of Campania, the 'Ndrangheta controls much of Calabria, and Cosa Nostra has a tight grip on the island of Sicily.

Loan sharking and extortion make up more than half of mafia income, according to the report. The mafia forced 160,000 businesses to pay extortion last year, SOS Impresa says. Eighty percent of all businesses in Palermo and Catania, Sicily's two biggest cities, gave kickbacks to the mob last year, the report said.

"In a quarter of Italy there's no freedom to do business,'' said Tano Grasso, Italy's former anti-extortion commissioner. "Only 1 percent of all foreign investment in Italy goes to the Mezzogiorno, and that has a lot to do with organized crime.'' Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who took office just over two months ago, pledged during his campaign to make the fight against organized crime a top priority.

Cosa Nostra's undisputed boss Bernardo Provenzano, 73, was captured a day after national elections in April after 43 years on the lam. Since his arrest, police have also picked up and charged most of the family bosses in the province of Palermo in an operation they called ``Gotha.''

"The capture of Provenzano not only had symbolic meaning in Sicily, but it had an immediate impact on ongoing investigations,'' said Senator Alfredo Mantovano, who was undersecretary to the Interior for the previous government.

While acknowledging the importance of Provenzano's capture, SOS Impresa President Lino Busa underlined the territorial control exerted by crime syndicates and their growing power. ``There's nothing new about how they operate,'' said Busa. "But the situation is enormously underestimated.''

SOS Impresa is sponsored by Confesercenti, Italy's second-biggest retail lobby. Its numbers were based primarily on elaborations of figures from the Interior Ministry, government statistics office Istat, and surveys carried out by SWG Srl polling company.
July 24, 2006 (Bloomberg)