Why the mafia are taking care of everyone’s business

I published the last weekend the news about an academic paper I have written together with my friend Dr. Alan Bersin, on a new repsonse towards transnational organized crime, Lines, Flows and Transnational Crime: Toward a Revised Approach to Countering the Underworld of Globalization

Roberto Saviano has written an imoortant and excellent article in The Guardian on this topic, named ’Why the mafia are taking care of everyone’s business’.

Saviano writes: ’Organised crime is already giving food parcels to the poor in Italy and Mexico. For the cartels and syndicates, this crisis is an opportunity’.

’Additionally, with most law enforcement agencies occupied in the fight against Covid-19, controls at sea and ports have decreased, giving the drug cartels and syndicates an easy ride by leaving ample space for the global circulation of narcotics’. -//-.

For the cartels and syndicates, this crisis is an opportunity

”…there is another door-to-door service that Italian mafia clans – and in particular the Camorra of Naples – have established: daily home deliveries of essentials. In the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Naples, where many people had jobs in the black economy and are now out of work, it is the clans that step in to provide welfare, giving families bread, milk and other basics”. -//-

Wherever and whatever survives Covid-19 will be open to mafia intervention

’The same strategy has been adopted by Mexican mafia cartels: in the border city of Matamoros, the Gulf cartel has been delivering parcels of basics to elderly and needy people. Further south in Jalisco and San Luis Potosí, boxes of provisions are labelled for distribution, as with an NGO or charity, by the rising Jalisco New Generation cartel. And in Guadalajara, aid packages bear the printed image of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel who, though in a US jail, continues to make his presence felt through gestures like these.’.

According to Italian anti-mafia sources, the Camorra has also started providing loans – but not at its usual high interest rates – of between 50% and 70%. Demand for loans is so high in this period that it is still profitable to offer competitive rates, even lower than those offered by the banks.’ -//-

Today we are in an emergency, and the imperative is to survive. But parallel to this pandemic, criminal interests are mobilising. For us to know that – and know them – will be part of that survival

’The next phase of the pandemic will see even more mafia activity. Companies that emerge from under the economic rubble may need an injection of capital to resume their activities: from catering to trade, from cement to tourism. In these sectors Italian mafia organisations are already well-embedded, not only in Italy but also internationally. For every honest entrepreneur at risk of having to close their restaurant or shop, there’s a mafia clan ready to intervene and take over the business, or offer a cash injection in exchange for shares’ -//-

’Today we are in an emergency, and the imperative is to survive. But parallel to this pandemic, criminal interests are mobilising. For us to know that – and know them – will be part of that survival’.

Here is a link to the article:

Source: TheGuardian