Italy’s mafia joining forces, turning to Chinese ‘shadow banks’, report says
Violent turf wars have given way to collaboration in drug trafficking, prostitution rings and money laundering, an anti-mafia agency says
Italy’s mafia was turning away from violent turf wars to collaborate in drug trafficking, prostitution rings and money laundering, the national anti-mafia agency (DIA) said in an annual report about the organised crime groups on Tuesday.
Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the Camorra around Naples were forming alliances at home and abroad, while the ‘Ndrangheta, based in Calabria in Italy’s southern toe, was increasingly focused on controlling public works projects, the report said.
“Coexistence has fostered synergies that have progressively become structured,” DIA director Michele Carbone told a press conference. These structures had become “capable of absorbing overlaps, tensions and frictions,” he added.
Public works linked to Italy’s EU-backed post-Covid Recovery Fund, plans for a huge bridge connecting Sicily to the mainland, and preparations for the 2026 Winter Olympics were all in danger of mafia infiltration, the DIA report said.
The construction sector represented 38 per cent of administrative anti-mafia measures in 2024, with investigations into 200 building sites for public projects.
Carbone said the DIA was ready to block any mafia involvement in the bridge to Sicily.