The trend also continues abroad. The Italian mafia`s Camorra group has reportedly controlled garbage in the city of Naples since the early 1980s. The faulty system caught the world`s attention in 2008, when uncollected garbage piled up on city streets for more than two weeks because the mafia kept landfills closed. But even when landfills weren`t closed, Naples` streets were notorious for being filled with garbage due to the Camorra`s mismanagement in the waste management system [source: Wanted in Rome]. In addition, the Camorra mafia has been illegally disposing of and burning toxic waste for decades, with catastrophic consequences for the environment, agriculture, food production and human health [source: Deitche]. Talk about a bad wind. In European countries, criminals invest in wind farms and other types of green energy to launder dirty money. In fact, a growing „eco-mafia” in Italy is using environmental subsidies offered by the Italian government and the European Union to get into the wind sector. The plague represents a great opportunity for many companies.
Organised crime now plays a prominent role in a large number of illicit markets. Organized crime groups (OCGs) manage illicit activities such as drugs, extortion, extortion, firearms, counterfeiting, theft of goods, illegal gambling, human trafficking and usury. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, illicit markets are worth $2.1 trillion, or about 3.6 percent of global GDP, with a profit margin of more than 30 percent. Meyer Lansky III, the grandson of the infamous Meyer Lansky, one of the leading players in the Mafia in the 1930s and beyond, admits that his namesake had some unlikely deals in his time. Lansky, who shares his family history in the AMC documentary series The Making of the Mob, says Grandpa tried his hand at jukeboxes in the `40s. „He had a Wurlitzer distribution store in New York,” Lansky says. „It had this for about a year and spread to different neighborhoods in the area. They rented it to bars and facilities. They would take root and build roots.
Organized crime has always invested in legitimate businesses as a base of operations and laundered money from their illegal activities. Unfortunately for the mafia, cash-based businesses, as well as small family businesses, are falling by the wayside in favor of franchising and digital currency. From Italy to Japan, from Brazil to Nigeria, organized crime is established all over the world and often follows the same structure as legal multinationals. It has an economic, management, marketing and hierarchy model while maintaining its trademark: violence and bill settlement. But these business opportunities are not the only benefit that epidemics bring to criminal organizations. An even more profitable commodity is silence. With public attention completely monopolized by the Covid-19 outbreak, mafia syndicates can maneuver undisturbed. For the Calabrian mafia, the `Ndrangheta, this would be familiar territory: for years it has made capital investments in the pharmaceutical and health products sectors. In March 2016, it was revealed that the `Ndrangheta had worked aggressively to establish itself in the medical and pharmaceutical industry throughout Lombardy – which has become the „ground zero” of Covid-19 in Italy – and had even sent cartel members and their dependents to qualify in medicine, nursing and pharmacology. In Europe, officials have raised concerns about the huge sums of money laundered by the mafia through online gambling, particularly via websites based in Germany, where there are no penalties for illegal gambling activities [source: Walther]. And in Italy, where online gambling has risen sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities are investigating more than 300 people linked to an online gambling system [source: Ford]. Criminal organizations reinvest these profits in legal markets, conduct legitimate activities and create strategic partnerships with established market players.
Cross-border reports highlight significant criminal investments in sectors as diverse as construction, retail, energy, banking, waste and scrap management, and agriculture. Italian organized crime groups (Cosa Nostra, `Ndrangheta and Camorra) invest in legal companies in Italy and abroad. The prosecution uncovered significant mafia investments in the food value chain, as well as in solar and wind power plants in Italy and Eastern Europe. In Germany, the Camorra specializes in clothing stores, while Cosa Nostra prefers the construction sector and `Ndrangheta operates factories, restaurants, hotels and grocery stores. The Italian `Ndrangheta has been successfully selling Dutch flowers for more than two decades without anyone noticing. gambinogenovesemafia businessmafia companiesmafia in business Today, pizzerias, restaurants and cafes run by the crowd are everywhere. Coldiretti, a leading Italian consumer organization representing agricultural entrepreneurs, estimates that at least 5,000 restaurants are run by the mafia in Italy alone. He also warns that the mob is extending its reach to the entire Italian food chain – the „agromafia” – including farmland, livestock and markets, as well as restaurants. What do you think? More than €22 billion ($25 billion) in 2018 alone. Shockingly, they earn some of this money by ignoring health and safety issues and putting people and the environment at risk [sources: The Local Italy, Roberts]. If this happens in Italy, it is likely to happen in other countries as well. Think of how quickly contracts are tendered to meet exceptional needs.
Consider the ability to move goods and money without all the normal controls or legal and bureaucratic protocols. The plague is a blessing for the commercial class. Even though crowd types have gained notoriety on television and in movies, there is still a perception that the actual crowd is less present or relevant than in the past. In the digital age, cash transactions are more transparent, making it more difficult to increase competition. The law appears to be better suited to catching these criminals, and a number of high-profile charges have made headlines, starting with the notorious cases brought by Manhattan lawyers Rudy Giuliani in the 1980s and Robert Morgenthau in the 1990s, to the historic arrest of members of New York`s „Five Families” by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in 2011 (Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese) [source: Rashbaum]. Professor Operti notes that the confiscation of OCG`s economic assets (e.g. savings, financial products, company shares resulting from their investments in legal markets or entire companies) is beneficial for the region.
It reduces unfair competition in the market. Attracted by the prospect of fairer gaming, entrepreneurs gain confidence and are more willing to start new businesses. On the other hand, the seizure of operational assets of criminal organizations (such as real estate or land or vehicles used to exercise territorial control and private protection) has a negative impact on regional cases. This may be because real estate or vehicles seized from OCGs cannot be deployed quickly to legal markets. It may also be because freezing the operating assets of OCGs weakens their ability to exercise sovereignty over a territory, creating an institutional vacuum and increasing uncertainty for potential market participants. Scientists have observed that many other societies around the world have their own criminal organizations that offer the same type of protection service. For example, in Russia, after the collapse of communism, the state security system almost collapsed, forcing businessmen to hire criminal gangs to enforce their contracts and protect their property from thieves. These gangs are commonly referred to as „the Russian mafia” by foreigners, but they prefer to use the term Krysha. A 2015 study of Italian crowds published in the British Journal of Criminology found that real estate was attractive to the Mafia for many reasons: it provided a base for activities such as gambling and prostitution; there was no regulatory body overseeing it (as with the stock exchange); and real property could be leased or used for legal purposes.
Real estate could also be prestigious, allowing the family to be seen as socially important in an area [source: Dugato, et al].