In the wake of the corona crisis, new opportunities are opened for it to regain lost power.

“The risk is that the mafia will grow. The state must do everything now to help businesses and people and prevent it ”.

Warning words from Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese who yesterday in an interview with La Repubblica talked about how the mafia is moving forward its positions.

Ten million risk poverty

It is usually called "Italy's largest company". The Mafia, the organized crime. It consists of over 700 groups, with families and clans, most of which are part of the mafia's three main groups: Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Camorran in the Naples region and Calabria's Ndranghetan.

The Corona crisis means that over ten million Italians are at risk of poverty. Something that in turn gives organized crime the chance to both open new doors and try to regain lost land and power.

'Ndranghetan is the most secretive mafia and for many lesser known, but it is the one that is most economically successful with huge revenue from the arms and drug trade.

According to Italy's anti-mafia agency DIA, the demand for sales in 2019 is equivalent to over SEK 600 billion. And most of the money comes from operations in northern Italy. Because even though the mafia bases are in the historically poor and disadvantaged south, in the north there is the big money, not least in Italy's financial center Lombardy, with over 10 million inhabitants, the country's most populous and rich region.

Can get hold of contributions

When Italy now has to try to start the economy again and is also expected to get billions in support from the EU, the country's interior ministry, like Europol, warns that the mafia will try to access grants and investment money in various ways through shell companies, money laundering and other.

At the same time, its power is also growing at a smaller level; both individuals and small family companies are offered assistance and loans and thus risk being bound to the mafia.

Already in March, a directive came to the Department of Pubblica Sicurezza, public safety, to immediately set up an investigation to find out how the mafia could benefit from the crisis and then begin to act to counteract it.

Risk awareness is thus great, how far it will be will depend, among other things, on how deep the economic crisis after the corona will be.

The Foreign Office is published every Wednesday evening on SVT Play. It is also broadcast in SVT2 on Wednesday 22.10.  

Program Manager: Johan Ripås.