NEWSLETTER

INTERVIEW BY TIM SMALL

Are the three Mafias very different from each other?

Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, is the most well known mainly because of films and because they have killed many important public figures, like Judge Falcone. The ’Ndrangheta is a very powerful organization, but nobody knows much about it, because it’s based on blood ties. You can’t become an affiliate if you aren’t related. Plus, there’s very few of them, and they have very few informers.

And the Camorra?

The Camorra, on the other hand, is the most porous. You can enter it even if you’re unrelated. Even if you have parents in law enforcement. The entry to the clan is completely liberalized. They permit the creation of groups. I mean, if you and I were to go to Naples, we could create our own group, do our own extortion, coordinate our own trafficking. If we became a nuisance, they might kill us. Or if we became powerful enough, we might make allies. Maybe we’d enter another, bigger group. Or we might declare war on them. This is why it’s such a bloody organization: They can’t exist without armed encounters. During their war of Secondigliano, where different clans were fighting one another, there was a tally of four or five murders a day. In those few months, there were more deaths in the area of Secondigliano than in Baghdad.

But the different Mafias work together?

Yes, they are allied. But these names are false: The Sicilian Mafia is actually called Cosa Nostra, but the ’Ndrangheta is called Cosa Nuova, the New Thing. And the Camorra is simply known as the System. Nobody inside the organizations calls them by their widespread names. Those are names for cops and journalists. However, even if they work together, they don’t exactly love each other. The Camorra looks down on the Cosa Nostra, because they made the mistake of murdering celebrities. The “idiocy of the Corleone” is how they define it. They see it as an overrated Mafia. They have always leaned toward the right-wing parties for support, and the anti-Mafia commission is traditionally left-wing. The ’Ndrangheta and the Camorra look left, making it very hard to talk about them.

It seems that the three Mafias do their business and deal with their public perception in different ways, and that the Camorra is the most media-savvy.

The famous Camorrista Pasquale Galasso, during his trial in front of the anti-Mafia commission, when asked why they had never killed enemy judges or lawyers, replied, “Because we don’t need to kill. We prefer to delegitimize.” They know that if you kill public figures, you play the game of those who want you arrested, but if you delegitimize them, if you remove their ability to hurt you by destroying their career or reputation, you use the perfect democratic tool. You use libel. They have also killed at times, but only figures that they thought they could get away with, like Giancarlo Siani, a young freelance reporter. And in any case, the relationship between the Mafia, politics, and the media is very complicated.

Why?

In the States, or in other countries, there is no way you could be a politician who has publicly known ties to organized crime. In Italy, it’s the norm. In fact, politicians often do their best to show that they can work with the Mafia, because it’s seen, in many circles, as something positive. If everybody knows you have ties with the System, they know you’ll be able to get the right contracts, to make things happen, and that those works won’t be sabotaged. The Mafia makes administrations more effective. It is an economic lubricant.

But if it’s so intertwined with the state and the law, isn’t it sort of invincible?

For sure. We won’t see the end of organized crime. It will take many generations, if it is ever to happen. Italy can’t afford to lose $230 billion worth of business. It would collapse. Europe would collapse. The only way to fight it is to organize the downfall of a specific family. Remember, there isn’t one boss who won’t end up killed or in jail. It always happens. So the authorities can stop one family. Like the Corleones. But after them there will be another and then another. It’s just fighting the symptoms. Funnily enough, this constant changing of the guard makes the System work better. If they didn’t live in this culture of death, they would be easily defeatable: It’d be a monopoly, which makes prices rise, and which creates publicly despised, all-powerful bosses. Instead, the fact that they kill each other and are in competition with one another keeps the prices lower, allows for diversified investments, and keeps the authorities guessing. Like in any form of capitalism, monopolies destroy economies.

Is there a way to change things?

You would need to attack the financial-economic side. You’d need to change capitalism. As long as contracts end up in the hands of those who offer the job in the quickest, cheapest way, they will always win. Because they bend rules. Because they have illegal incomes, which they use to irrigate their other companies, and because they can pressure politicians. Think of the case of the clan of the Casalesi. They opened some illegal dumps outside Aversa, which they filled with garbage and toxic waste. Then, word comes around that the government is building a motorway. They pressure the politicians into building it over their dumps. Then they cover the dumps in cement, they sell the land to the government, and, cherry on top, they land the contract to build the motorway. That’s three highly lucrative deals. No straight entrepreneur could do something like that.

You often mention the waste-management business and the Camorra. How does a situation like that of the garbage emergency in Naples come about?

Basically, the region of Campania is filled with dumps which are run by the Camorra, illegally or semi-legally. If you add it up, it has accounted for some $300 billion in the past 20 years. The dumps are full because they contain all the garbage and toxic waste in Italy. Because, as I mentioned before, Camorra-owned businesses can offer the best prices.

Don’t they have a problem with polluting the land they live in?

To start with, many bosses were against this idea. But the fact is—because of the constant, ruthless competition—if you don’t do it, another clan will. And if they do, they’ll make so much money that they’ll run you into the ground. Like with drugs. Many families are against them, but you can’t run away from business. You’ll end up being the weak one, the intellectual one. Real businessmen have no ethics.


CONTINUED
TAKING ON THE ITALIAN MAFIA | 1 | 2 | 3 |

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