Roberto Saviano shares the same concern with Italian officials, as this author considers a famous book about the mafia that these circles are waiting for the opportunity to exploit the poverty of the poor to buy their loyalty by providing food and free loans.
Saviano - the author of the book "Gomora" on the Naples Mafia (Camura) - says that the mafia gangs are seeking to take advantage of the collapse of the third European economy to seize troubled companies.
"The mafia is usually waiting for crises," Roberto Saviano explains - during a video interview via video technology - because companies who are victims will find themselves with new partners linked to these criminal organizations.
He asserts that they "become partners ... they do not come and threaten with a gun, but rather they receive advice from their financial advisors."
In Gomura, the author describes how, along with its traditional criminal activity (drugs and various types of illegal traffic), camoramas expanded their influence, to include traditional economics, fashion, and waste treatment.
The various Italian mafia gangs have great influence in many basic sectors of the economy, from building and managing waste and agriculture, as well as hotels and air energy.
help
"If Europe does not intervene quickly, the mafia money will multiply in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium and get out of control," says Roberto Saviano.
Besides providing food to the poorest of the poor in the big city of Naples (southern Italy), mortgage holders canceled interest on the debt by order of the Camorra, Saviano asserts.
"What is the point of that?" Asked the journalist, who is currently based in New York and has been protected by the police since his book on Camorra was released in 2006, because he received threats.
"These services may take the form of votes in elections or agreements to use individual names as a front for contracts," he says.
The German newspaper "Die Welt" sparked controversy last week in Italy, when it wrote that the mafia was "waiting for a new barrage of money from Brussels."
In a context of tension between Berlin and Rome over European aid to Italy, which is suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic, the newspaper warned against giving Europe funds "without borders and supervision."
But Saviano stresses that "the opposite will happen," considering that the German newspaper is wrong, and the journalist believes that the lack of funds benefits the mafia, and pushes the poor into its arms.
Money and criminality
The writer's opinion coincides with what the mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistrates, told Agence France Presse a short time ago: "Criminals have money while they are not bound by the bureaucracy, and they know which door to knock, and they are fast-moving and effective. It is a race; if they arrive before us we will face the risk of infection." Criminal activity in Naples and the rest of Italy as well. "
Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorghese announced in an interview with the newspaper "Corriere della Sera" the issuance of a decree soon allowing police officials to "monitor the situation, where there is a risk of a significant criminal penetration ... many of the workers in a vulnerable position, seasonal workers and those working in the market Blacks: They may form a reservoir of criminal labor ", especially in the poor south of the country.
The European Union countries agreed last Thursday to a plan to support the economy, which was affected by the epidemic in the heart, with the allocation of more than five hundred billion euros to countries, companies and the unemployed, as well as a "fund for recovery" in the future.