ORGANIZED CRIME IN ITALY

ORGANIZED CRIME IN ITALY

NAPLES 00000037 001.2 OF 004 CLASSIFIED BY: J. PATRICK TRUHN, CONSUL GENERAL, AMCONGEN NAPLES, STATE. REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 1. (U) Summary: This is the second of a three-part series; this message examines the economic dimension of organized crime in Southern Italy. According to a recent study, organized crime is the biggest individual segment of the Italian economy, accounting for seven percent of GDP. Wherever it occurs, organized crime in Italy distorts markets. While in some instances it lowers prices (but usually with adverse side effects), in general its activities (e.g., extortion, rigging of public contracts) lead to higher costs for the government, business owners and consumers. Estimates of how much organized crime costs the country are at best approximate, and do not always take into account the lost opportunities for foreign investment, the pernicious environmental and health effects, the losses due to corruption and inefficiency, and social costs related to higher rates of drug dependency and drug-related crimes. The three main organized crime groups in Italy earn tens to hundreds of billions of euros a year, depending on the estimate. End summary. Organized Crime: Businessmen With Guns ----------------------------------------- 2. (U) Often viewed as a political or social phenomenon, organized crime in Italy, as in any country, is first and foremost a business. A 2007 report by the Italian business association Conferescenti estimates that it is the biggest sector of the Italian economy, with a 90 billion euro ($143 b) turnover, accounting for seven percent of GDP, and 20,000 "employees." However, because illegal activity is by definition clandestine, it is impossible to quantify all of its effects on the economy. Organized crime distorts prices (mostly upwards, but sometimes downwards); undermines legitimate business; discourages entrepreneurship and the establishment of large businesses; and hinders economic growth, not only in the South but throughout Italy. The GOI's Statistics Institute (ISTAT) calculated in late 2007 that Italy's underground economy accounts for about 18 percent of total GDP; not all of the black-market economy, however, is run by organized crime. According to a 2008 study by the anti-Mafia Rocco Chinnici Foundation, extortion, loan sharking, money laundering, tax evasion and wasted public funds are estimated to cost the Sicilian economy a hefty one billion euros annually, or 1.3 percent of the island's GDP. According to another study by the Eurispes Institute (an Italian think tank), the Cosa Nostra earns over eight billion euros ($12.7 b) a year from its activities; the Camorra about 12 billion euros ($19 b) a year; and the 'Ndrangheta 36 billion euros ($57.2 b) a year -- basically tax-free. A May 2008 report by the Eurispes think tank calculates that the 'Ndrangheta's business operations represent 2.9 percent of Italy's GDP, or 44 billion euros ($70.8 b) per year, the equivalent to the combined GDPs of booming EU members Slovenia and Estonia. Sixty-two percent of this amount comes from the drug trade. A CENSIS study estimates that organized crime annually drains 5.7 billion euros from the Italian economy and represents a loss of 2.5 percent in the South's economic growth. Italy's Treasury Police estimated in 2005 that the profits realized from illicit activities (not all of which are controlled by these three groups) ranged from 500 to 1,000 billion euros per year. The wide range of these various estimates is an indication of just how difficult it is to calculate the profit and effects of organized crime in Italy. 3. (C) In addition to extracting money from others, the Mafia engages in its own entrepreneurship when it comes to public contracts, especially in the construction industry. In the case of Cosa Nostra, for example, the criminal organizations, using money laundered from other illegal activities such as extortion, turn private real estate companies into Mafia-controlled monopolies. Through a system of programmed rotation, all of the NAPLES 00000037 002.2 OF 004 companies controlled by the Mafia are guaranteed contracts while offering only a minimal discount; the lucrative profits allow the contract winners to deliver larger bribes to both the Mafia and the corrupt politicians and public officials who accommodate it. Through such transactions, billions of euros in central government and EU development funds have wound up in the hands of organized crime. Lorenzo Diana, a former Senator and former head of the Democratic Left Party's anti-Mafia unit, makes the credible assertion that most of the highway running from Naples to Reggio Calabria was built -- using substandard materials and methods -- by Camorra and 'Ndrangheta clans. According to Vincenzo Macri, a deputy anti-Mafia prosecutor, the proposed Strait of Messina bridge (linking Sicily to the mainland) is another goldmine on the horizon for organized crime. Although the crime syndicates would be only marginally involved in the planning, the realization phase will offer billions of euros in contracts and subcontracts for construction, materials, services and other forms of what he terms "indifference." 4. (C) Prices for most goods and services in Southern Italy are anywhere between two and five percent higher than what they would be in the absence of organized crime, according to several sources. Giuseppe Gennaro, and anti-Mafia prosecutor in Catania, Sicily, tells us that the Cosa Nostra takes a two to three percent "tax" on most transactions in Sicily. In Reggio Calabria, Prefect Salvatore Montanaro says 70 to 80 percent of businesses in his province pay protection money; estimates for Sicily are similar, while about 40 percent of businesses in Campania and Apulia reportedly make extortion payments. SOS Impresa, an anti-racket association, estimates that the mafia-related cost to Italian merchants is 30 billion euros ($47.7 b) annually, including 12 billion from usury, 11 billion from rigged contracts and six billion from extortion. Protection "fees" range from 100 to 500 euros per month for small stores to 10,000 euros per month for construction sites. Those who refuse to pay are threatened, harassed and sometimes attacked or killed, or their businesses are burned. According to the Chinnici Foundation study, however, those who do pay do not feel any safer. One long-term extortion victim claimed his payments "resulted in no concrete benefit, either in terms of security or business growth." Another called it "a liberty-killing event, the worst insult, an attack on your very existence...like kicking yourself in the face." 5. (C) This is not to say that the market distortions always raise prices. According to Roberto Saviano, author of a best-selling book about the Camorra, industries can save up to 80 percent of the cost to legally dispose of their toxic waste by hiring the Camorra to dispose of it clandestinely. This actually makes many factories (virtually all of which are located in northern Italy) more competitive, but at a terrible environmental cost (the brunt of which is paid by residents in the South, where the waste winds up). According to former MP Isaia Sales, an expert who has written two books on the Camorra, organized crime sometimes lowers agricultural and food prices, too, by favoring certain business owners who are able to produce more efficiently due to increased business. The Camorra also lowers real estate values, by forcing property owners to sell at ridiculously low prices through intimidation. Similar to the Camorra's trafficking in toxic waste to reduce the burden for northern Italian business, the 'Ndrangheta (according to Mario Spagnuolo, anti-Mafia prosecutor in Catanzaro) manages illegal immigration rings that provide foreign workers to Calabrian employers for a mere 20 to 30 euros a day, thus lowering labor costs for some businesses. Spagnuolo also says the 'Ndrangheta has so streamlined the arms market (trafficking, for example, in leftovers from the Bosnia war) that one can purchase a Kalashnikov assault rifle for one-third the price of a legally purchased pistol. NAPLES 00000037 003.2 OF 004 Environmental and Health Costs ------------------------------ 6. (U) The effects on the environment and health are stunning. Saviano told a recent interviewer that the Camorra earned six billion euros in two years from toxic waste disposal. "Farmlands bought at extremely low prices are transformed into illegal dumping grounds.... The type of garbage dumped includes everything: barrels of paint, printer toner, human skeletons, cloths used for cleaning cow udders, zinc, arsenic and the residue of industrial chemicals." Authorities near Naples discovered in February 2008 a dump brimming with hospital waste, including used syringes, thousands of vials of blood samples and a human embryo. Legitimate landfills have also been also used for illegal dumping, one of the reasons they are now at capacity, which has led to a waste disposal crisis throughout a large part of Campania region (ref B). In 2006, the World Health Organization found rates for stomach, liver, kidney, lung and pancreatic cancer to be up to 12 percent higher than the national average in areas just north of Naples where the Camorra has dumped thousands of truckloads of toxic waste. The environmental costs of organized crime may never be calculable, and the overall costs in terms of human and animal disease and mortality cannot be quantified. 7. (U) Organized crime's environmental impact extends to food frauds, and Campania leads the country in this sector. According to police reports, the Camorra runs an estimated 2,000 illegal bakeries (two thirds of the region's total), using expired flour and ovens which emit toxic fumes (the "wood" is often old doors covered in paint). Caserta has illegal cheese factories which mix buffalo milk with powdered milk from Bolivia, cutting retail mozzarella costs by a third; they also use lime to help ricotta "keep" longer. According to a Commander of Naples' Carabinieri, the most flourishing business is recycling expired products. The Camorra also passes off low-quality imports with made-in-Campania labels, from pesticide-laden Moldovan apples to E. coli-infested Moroccan industrial salt. Organized crime is also heavily involved in IPR fraud, from fake designer fashion bags to bogus DVDs; Sicilian authorities even discovered recently several garages where fake Ferraris were being manufactured. Creating Chaos -------------- 8. (C) Organized crime also has insidious effects on the urban landscape. Giap Parini, a researcher who met us at the University of Calabria in Cosenza, says that it is wrong to think of mob-infested cities as poor; on the contrary, they can be inhabited by wealthy bosses. Behind the run-down exterior walls are golden faucets and marble bathrooms. No, the main characteristic of a mob city, Parini argues, is chaos. Uncontrolled expansion, illegal construction, lack of green spaces, failed urban planning, incomplete public works, poor infrastructure, low educational standards, and general government inefficiency are all signs of organized crime. Mayors who try to install illumination in public areas often find the lights broken within a day, as streetlamps are not propitious for drug dealing. Naples Prosecutor GianDomenico Lepore says politicians and citizens do not realize the burden that organized crime is on the economy: "There's no development here." Indeed, the Camorra made an enormous profit in the early 1980s by constructing public housing in Naples after a major earthquake; today, these neighborhoods are characterized by crumbling cement high-rises and an absence of piazzas, stores, parks and trees. 9. (C) Ironically, according to University of Calabria sociology professor Pietro Fantozzi, there are more giant NAPLES 00000037 004.2 OF 004 shopping malls per capita in poverty-stricken Calabria than in the prosperous Milan metropolitan area. Throughout Southern Italy, highway exits are lined with luxury car dealerships, expensive home decoration stores, and ostentatious, neo-classical villas -- fantasies about which the general public (nearly a third of whom are living at or below poverty level) can only dream. 10. (SBU) Comment: Put all these factors together and it becomes clear that organized crime is a major, if not the main reason why the southern Italian economy lags so far behind that of the rest of the country, and one of the main causes of Italy's growth lagging behind the rest of the European Union. Organized crime keeps away investors and ensures that small businesses cannot become large, which in turn perpetuates the high unemployment rates (averaging 20 percent in the South, and 35 percent for young people). Extortion and the imposition of Mafia-associated suppliers make many businesses unprofitable; business owners must compensate by raising prices and/or by not paying taxes. Attempts by the government or the EU to spark development in the South are frustrated by Mafia-run corruption and mob fixing of contracts and sub-contracts. Legitimate businesses are also undercut by Mafia-led production and distribution of pirated and counterfeit products. Development would create an alternative to organized crime that would put its practitioners out of business, so it is in the mob's interest to retard economic and social development. Not surprisingly, a study published in January 2008 by researchers at the Magna Grecia University of Catanzaro and Naples' Federico II University showed that the presence of organized crime is a strong disincentive for foreign investors. While the established U.S. businesses in the South (almost all of which are relatively large) have not complained to ConGen Naples about organized crime, countless potential investors have expressed to our Commercial Service office a reluctance to invest out of fear of the mob. Southern Italy has few major U.S. investments compared to the rest of the country. In the end, the costs of organized crime are felt directly or indirectly by virtually every Italian citizen. While the problem might seem intractable, the third and final cable in this series will examine ways Italy and the United States can successfully confront organized crime. End comment.