Covid: Dia, the attempt by mafias to infiltrate the economy is growing

With the prolongation of the emergency due to Covid, "the tendency to infiltrate the healthy economic and social fabric" by criminal organizations "would be further highlighted". This is what the DIA Report to Parliament affirms for the second semester of 2020, underlining that the mafias are dealing with a "criminal strategy which, in a period of serious crisis, would offer organizations the opportunity to be able to successfully detect market for companies in difficulty, and to grab the public resources allocated to face the health emergency ". 

Organized crime is changing its face more and more

: Cosa Nostra, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta constantly work to expand their relationship skills and increasingly in synergy with white-collar workers, "replacing the use of violence, increasingly residual, with lines of action of silent infiltration ". The analysis of how criminal organizations are evolving is contained in the Report of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate.

The Cosa Nostra clans,

which was responsible for defining the most delicate issues, have adopted "a coordination based on sharing guidelines and the distribution of spheres of influence among prominent exponents of the various districts, even from different provinces ". In the provinces of Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento, Cosa Nostra remains hegemonic and there are repeated attempts at a "significant revitalization" of contacts with families abroad: investigations reveal how the clans have "reopened the doors to the so-called 'escaped' - they say the analysts - or rather, to the new generations of those whose fathers had had to find refuge abroad following the mafia war of the early 1980s ".

In the central-eastern area of ​​Sicily, on the other hand, "more fluid and flexible" organizations are active alongside the historical clans. Among these, the Report emphasizes, "a particular importance is to be attributed to 'Stidda', an organization initially created in opposition to the Cosa Nostra but which today tends to seek an agreement with the latter for the division of illicit business".

The investigations have also highlighted how some of these organizations have made "a qualitative leap" from groups devoted mainly to predatory crimes to associations "capable of infiltrating the economic-entrepreneurial fabric of northern Italy". The areas of interest on which the attention of the clans are concentrated are always the same: extortion, usury, drug trafficking, drug dealing, infiltration into illicit gambling and the control of illegal gambling. And the infiltration of those economic areas that benefit from public subsidies also continues, particularly in the sectors of energy production from renewable sources, agriculture and livestock. Infiltrations possible thanks to the "complicity of unfaithful politicians and officials".

In the last half of 2020, Dia carried out

and carried out 12,057 investigations on individuals.

The 'Ndrangheta remains firmly leader in international drug trafficking, but "no longer appears so monolithic and impermeable to collaboration with the law

by affiliates as well as entrepreneurs and traders, until yesterday forced to silence for fear of serious retaliation by the mafia organization ". The Report reports the consolidated projection of affiliated groups in all Italian regions, in various European countries (Spain, France, United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovak Republic, Romania and Malta), as well as in Australia, United States and Canada. The frequent involvement in illicit affairs of women and minors was also highlighted.

"The unscrupulous greed of the 'Ndrangheta does not hesitate to

despite the economic crisis that is also weighing on the Calabrian social context and even though the organization has huge financial resources illegally accumulated". The reference is a series of investigations that have seen various people affiliated or contiguous to the Calabrian clans as undue recipients of citizenship income: involved, in particular, men from the

families

. As part of the Tantalus operation, for example, the Carabinieri referred 135 irregular recipients of

to the judicial authority of Locri

, some of which are linked by ties of kinship and / or affinity to local associations and, about half, resident in San Luca.