Italian Mafia's Profits Soar in Lousy Economy

(Jan. 27) -- Italy's Mafia cleaned up to the tune of $109 billion in profits last year thanks to a well-honed knack for wringing money out of desperate people in a recession.

Italian crime syndicates raised profits by almost 8 percent in 2009 over the previous year by taking advantage of Italy's distressed economy, according to a new report from Confesercenti, an organization representing Italy's small and medium-sized businesses, including shopkeepers who are among those most affected by Mafia extortion and crimes.

"Mafia Inc. is reinforcing its position as the number one Italian company," said the report released today by Confesercenti's research arm, SOS Impresa.

Salvatore Laporta, AP

Italy's Mafia has generated record profits amid the recession even in the face of growing public protests, such as this one from last year.

With its ready access to cash, the Mafia has been able to launder its money even more readily by snapping up cheap assets, the report said. And Italy's newly unemployed are both vulnerable to loan-sharking and more willing to work for the mob.

"In times of crisis the Mafia's money, even though it is dirty, makes people's mouths water," the report said.

Even the stock market may not be immune to Italy's biggest crime syndicates, which include Sicily's Cosa Nostra, Naples' tough Camorra, Calabria's 'Ndrangheta, and Puglia's Sacra Corona Unita. SOS Impresa cited interviews and statistics from police, mob informants and government officials indicating that the Mafia may increase its targeting of the stock market to launder its ill-gotten gains.

"There is a risk the Mafia could take advantage of the difficulties of some large business groups who are undergoing a liquidity crisis to attempt to get into the stock market behind the scenes in a big way," the report said.

"The Mafia is more powerful than ever," a spokeswoman for Lino Busa, head of SOS Impresa, said Wednesday. "They are doing well in these bad times."

The report also indicated that the mob has diversified as its profits have continued to soar. While drugs remain the single largest source of revenue, other old-style Mafia interests such as construction and public contracting are waning as the syndicates turn to more sophisticated targets such as stocks and bonds and marked-down companies.

The report pegged the Mafia's joint overall turnover last year at an eye-popping $169 billion, almost two-thirds of which was profit. An estimated $27 billion was laundered.

SOS Impresa said there was a risk that with the prices of property, stocks and bonds, and companies themselves brought down by the crisis, mobsters could use profits from recession-proof activities like drugs to "go on a financial shopping spree."