The Mafia. With those two words, images will already be swirling around your mind. A bloody horse’s head left in a bed; murder and corruption in Italy and beyond; Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino – the Corleone family; mobsters and crooked politicians. Many of these images will be shaped by TV and movies. From The Godfather to The Sopranos, Goodfellas to Inspector Montalbano, the Mafia is pervasive in popular culture. The popularity of tales of crime and violence involving gangs in Sicily and Naples, and their American cousins in New York, Boston and New Jersey seems never-ending. But the Mafia are not a construct of fiction. They are very much a reality, and governments globally spend massive amounts fighting them. A 2017 Europol report revealed about 5,000 Mafia-like organised crime groups were investigated across that continent that year. Italy is the home of several of the biggest and most well-known of these criminal organisations. Sicily is the birthplace of the Cosa Nostra, Campania of the Camorra, and Calabria of the ‘Ndrangheta. The Italian Mafia is considered the prototype for the Russian Mafia, the Yakuza in Japan, MS13 in North America, and various South and Latin American drug cartels. These organisations have an effect on the regions in which they operate. They reduce the quality of political governance; reduce electoral competition; increase corruption and reduce government efficiency; lead to the misallocation of public funds; restrict access to credit; and slow economic growth. There is a great deal of analysis of the effects of mafia firms – those with at least one board member or shareholder who has been convicted of being connected to the Mafia – on the region in which they operate. For example, there are studies that show that the presence of mafia firms reduces the economic development of that region by cutting private investment and increasing government investment. What about the effects on non-Mafia businesses? UNFAIR COMPETITION Mafia firms secure preferential treatment in the awarding of orders and contracts. A 2015 police operation against the ‘Ndrangheta discovered 29 people involved in a gambling business that, using violence and intimidation, forced bars, restaurants and betting parlours to buy slot machines and services from a Mafia-connected firm. 40 |
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