The Mafia immune to Corona ... How to exploit pandemic criminal organizations?

The Spanish newspaper El Pais said that the mafia organizations in southern Italy are taking advantage of the crisis resulting from the outbreak of the Corona virus, to mobilize more popular support by distributing food and cash aid and to lay out their many funds in ways that will bring them a lot of profits after the health crisis recedes.

The newspaper reported in a special report that the Italian police surprised the relatives and members of the mafia in the regions of Calabria (south) and the island of Sicily (south) as they distributed shopping bags to people, taking advantage of the slow arrival of aid announced by the government of Giuseppe Conte.

The newspaper report included a long intervention by the Italian writer Roberto Saviano, an expert in organized crime, in which he said that the mafia is getting stronger in light of the Corona outbreak, because it exploits the need of many economic actors to provide funds to them with a low interest rate and sometimes without interest but in exchange for other services.

Saviano, who recently sharply criticized the corruption of his country's health system, explains that the economic crisis caused by the Coruna virus outbreak opened the door for the mafia to ovulate its money by investing in companies and institutions suffering from financial hardship.

"The goal of this mafia elite is not enrichment," says Nicola Gratteri, chief prosecutor in the city of Catanzaro (southern Italy) and a senior expert on Ndrangheta affairs (the most powerful mafia in Italy with more than 30,000 associates in the Calabria region alone and whose turnover is about 43 billion euros annually). Themselves, but power management. "

Gratteri fears the worst, explaining that while waiting for government aid to arrive in the area, the population is receiving mafia aid, which can sometimes be cash (300 or 400 euros).

Gartiri notes that these sums do not mean much to the Ndrangheta mafia, which relies on the drug trade, but represents everything to the poor, hence the strong man model, who will be able to obtain the votes of the voters when there is a ballot.

Who fills the void?
Italian police chief Franco Gabrielli and anti-mafia attorney general Federico Caffiero de Raho warn that recessions, during which liquid money evaporates, are an ideal opportunity for mafia organizations.

According to the newspaper, the mafia model dominating the Calabria region is no different from the "Cosa Nostra" mafia that dominates Sicily, and the Lacamra mafia that is active in the neighborhoods of the city of Naples (south-central), and says that when the state retreats, the mafia organization fills that void.

These three regions (Calabria, Sicily and Naples) come in the list of the poorest, and the informal economy accounts for about 20% of its wealth, according to figures from the Italian Statistical Institute.

Thousands of families live without receiving any aid from the state, although the government has promised 400 million euros to the municipalities to distribute them to the protesters in the form of vouchers, but it has been delayed due to the "slow system and lethal bureaucracy."

On the island of Sicily, the Mayor of Palermo, Lioluka Orlando, says the mafia is fueling social unrest to turn the new poor into slaves and drug traffickers, and stressed that public money is the alternative to mafia money throughout Italy.

El Pais quoted a judicial source in the city of Palermo, who asked not to be named, as saying that the outbreak of the Corona virus has become an obstacle to the efforts to fight the mafia due to quarantine measures, as it is difficult to obtain information about the movements of the mafia members.