
Italian Mafias killing less but infiltrating more businesses - walterbell
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/12/16/world/crime-legal-world/italian-mafias-killing-less-infiltrating-businesses/#.VnJptq88Kh9
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kfk
People and movies focused on the killings, while the real nightmares were and
are in the business, public sector and work environment. When you don't do
what a politician wants you to do, he sends you the tax authorities or some
other random authority of which Italy is full of, and he'll get what he wants.
Do you realize how bad this is? The Public Forces are used to enforce mafia-
like behavior. It's bad, it's widespread, it's cultural and it's stopping any
kind of real development or innovation. The problem is that Italy never really
got out of feudalism.

~~~
quadrature
Gomorrah
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929425/?ref_=nv_sr_2](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929425/?ref_=nv_sr_2)
does a really good job of portraying this aspect.

~~~
personlurking
So does the Romanzo Criminale series
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242773/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242773/)

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pakled_engineer
Bikers have done this too, here they own development corps which are just
rackets to exploit city tenders. Nobody else can bid or else you find your
yards and equipment robbed or destroyed. Police don't do anything because
propping up org crime is part of their management strategy of the failed war
on drugs. Young violent upstarts who heat out the city with public shootings
are better handled by the dominant org crime group so they let them racketeer
it up so long as they promise to reign in the lesser groups that make the
police look bad with public violence. Since these young upstarts need the
money laundering services only mafia/bikers can provide on that scale they
generally fall into line.

They also are propped up in the prison system in turn for helping the guards
establish order in overcrowded units. Guards do set ups to make sure the
dominant group always has an upper hand in any conflicts, like 4 associates
being "accidentally" put in the same class/program with a rival of another
group.

~~~
colanderman
I'd like to know more about this, do you have any references to articles about
the subject?

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pakled_engineer
I'll post some later tonight when not swamped at work crunch time, what would
end this is legalizing most of the black market since all you need to make a
million dollars right now is a handful of drug delivery drivers and a couple
of guns to shoot at and rob all the other drivers. Cities can then break up
the entrenched corruption since they don't need a "boss crew" to keep order.
Prisons won't be overcrowded with drug convictions either.

There will always be gangs but they won't have access to millions in capital
to fund huge street wars thus less incentive for new recruits to join them.

~~~
kafkaesq
Sounds most intriguing. Please do post.

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pakled_engineer
Here's one example, cops ask gang to police their members
[http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=5ccc1c20-c1ef-4dc5-a4f9-...](http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=5ccc1c20-c1ef-4dc5-a4f9-ae0f74a3aa5d)
and shortly afterwards said members start "losing status" (getting killed)
[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ex-
hell...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ex-hells-angels-
member-shot-dead-outside-vancouver-home/article1376917/?service=mobile) said
member also ran a tender corp.

The prison beating lawsuits are all here
[http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/11/26/violent-attacks-
in-...](http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/11/26/violent-attacks-in-b-c-jails-
increasing-and-victims-are-suing-the-government/)

There's also a well known illegal drugs shack called the "blackdoor" that
operates with impunity because before they arrived the streets were a free for
all of violence, during the Olympics the police asked them to close so the
media wouldn't discover it and embarass them.

Then of course there was all the Quebec mafia corruption probes into illegal
city tenders that went nowhere.

~~~
kafkaesq
Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

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api
My guess is that in a "professional" organized crime family if you have to
whack someone it means someone (possibly yourself) screwed something up very
badly. Killing someone is extremely high risk and is probably regarded as
sloppy operations.

It sort of mirrors the way governments have gotten more advanced with
repressive and tyrannical techniques. Unsophisticated governments will whack
people or arrest them and throw them in bottomless pit prisons, etc.
Sophisticated totalitarian regimes use nudge theory and very advanced
astroturf type propaganda, and when they have to 'whack' someone they
_discredit them_ and assassinate their _character_ and _credibility_ rather
than martyring them with a physical attack. Much cleaner, more efficient, and
in the end far more effective.

~~~
davidw
> My guess is that in a "professional" organized crime family if you have to
> whack someone it means someone (possibly yourself) screwed something up very
> badly.

Maybe, maybe not - a lot of those groups operate via intimidation, and there's
nothing like a gruesome murder to underline that.

~~~
noir_lord
Yes but one messy and brutal murder is more efficient than a bunch where the
body disappears and no-one ever hears about it.

The line is of course somewhere between "maximum intimidation" and "might
annoy enough people to have the police actually do something" I guess.

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nickpsecurity
This trend started a long time ago when they realized it's easier to hide
millions of dollars behind companies people expect to bring in millions of
dollars. The smaller ones often used chain stores that did a lot of cash
business but also plenty of volume. The larger ones just partnered with banks
that looked the other way at where the money was coming from. Sometimes they
start a bank (BCCI) geared toward like-minded individuals. A side-benefit of
all this is much less heat on them and [in U.S.] a statute of limitations on
any given crime that wasn't murder.

So this is nothing new except to the writer apparently.

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madez
One interesting fact is that the mafia was reduced to meaninglessness during
the facist era in italy. I deduce from that that there can be only one villian
in town.

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stefantalpalaru
The US liberators fixed that and made sure that Sicily was to become one of
the special statute regions. They don't send any collected VAT to the central
state to this day. And VAT in Italy is 22%.

~~~
douche
After WW2, there was a period of time when it was seriously considered that
Italy might come under communist control. Most famously, you have Operation
Gladio[1].

If I recall correctly (and I may not, because this is probably colored by some
History Channel conspiracy documentaries), there were contingency plans where
Sicily would secede to allow NATO to retain a foothold in the Mediterranean,
with the CIA relying on Cosa Nostra connections with the Sicillian mafia in
order to effect this...

Yep, I must have been watching that in between a special on the Mayan
calendar, and one on how Stonehenge is a pre-historic alien spaceport...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio)

~~~
coldtea
There's no shortage of international scumbags that big foreign powers have
made deals with and supported in their atrocities in order to get their
diplomatic/geopolitical games going.

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jnardiello
I don't think people realize that Mafia is not anymore what it used to be 50
years ago. They are well-established in different regions across europe (you
wish it was just an italian thing, right?) which are generating a tremendous
income with drugs and prostitution, but the real deal is when this capital
gets re-invested in legitimate business - again across europe. Do you really
think that once you get into the range of the tens of millions any financial
institution is going to turn down easily any investment? They won't.

So, I think it's so simplistic to picture mafia as gangsters robbing and
extorting businesses and dealing drugs. I rather picture them as shirt-and-tie
business men traveling to Milan, Munich, London, Luxemburg and Geneve looking
for investing opportunities.

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rezashirazian
"So, I think it's so simplistic to picture mafia as gangsters robbing and
extorting businesses and dealing drugs. I rather picture them as shirt-and-tie
business men traveling to Milan, Munich, London, Luxembourg and Geneva looking
for investing opportunities."

So where does the "organized crime" kick in?

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hellbanner
Interesting that this is hosted on a Japanese news site. Remember that Japan
has their own Yakuza.

~~~
asfandyaar
Don't really get your point... Almost every country has some sort of organized
crime.

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bitwize
The Italian mafia is evolving to operate more like the Japanese Yakuza do. The
Yaks are so "infiltrated" into Japanese business and civil service that the
Japanese just consider them a part of ordinary life. Only recently have law
enforcement and some businesses been cracking down on the Yakuza presence.

~~~
asfandyaar
I was under the impression the Italian mafia is very mainstream too.

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qubex
As an Italian entrepreneur in Milan I must say: absolutely not! We are
ensnared with inefficiencies often requiring ‘networking’, nepotism and
clientelism, but the reek of the Mafia is nauseating and avoided at all costs.
It's about, of course, but nobody I know or know of ‘accepts’ it.

~~~
asfandyaar
Is it more acceptable in certain regions? I guess Milan is a pretty important
city, so I can't see the Mafia being tolerated. But what about for small shops
in villages etc.?

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the-dude
Milan: North Mafia: South

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gtufano
That's definitely an oversemplification of a complex problem, as anyone can
understand. There is mafia also in the North of Italy, just a quick lookup to
the news will do.

Really, Italy is a young and complex countries with regional differences that
are almost ununderstandable to foreign people. There are many "mafias", more
or less violent, more or less connected with the economic and political
powers, it's not simple and it's not dicothomic, there is a very big grey
area.

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moron4hire
I guess they finally figured out there is more money ripping people off being
above the law as a banker or politician than below it as racketeers.

~~~
mgr86
The headline reads like a scene from the last episode of Fargo s2.

~~~
napoleond
I Ctrl-F'd "Fargo" upon reaching this page. Recommended viewing, for anyone
who hasn't watched it.

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guard-of-terra
Once they don't do killings, traditional business should be more efficient and
therefore drive them off.

Mafia should only be able to thrive in underground activites like predatory
loans, drugs and such.

