According to a report, organized crime groups manage to generate more than three billion euros per year, notably through loans paid to tourist establishments.
The Italian mafia earns more than three billion euros a year in the tourism sector and stands to pocket even more thanks to major events planned in the near future, a research institute warned on Tuesday.
Organized crime groups who prey on vulnerable businesses, from hotels to restaurants, currently make €3.3 billion a year and are set to profit from the Catholic Church’s jubilee celebrations and the Olympic Games. winter.
“Italian tourism is under attack. The Milan-Cortina Olympic Games in 2026 and the jubilee in 2025 are whetting the appetite of the mafia,” said Raffaele Rio, president of the Demoskopika institute, in this report.
The powerful Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta alone accounts for half of the total turnover, followed by the Camorra, Cosa Nostra and organized crime groups in the southern Puglia region.
Loans and laundering
While the roots of the various mafia groups lie in the south – the ‘Ndrangheta originated in Calabria, the Camorra in Campania – the groups have earned almost 1.5 billion euros from tourism in the rich north of the country, according to the report.
“More than 7,000 vulnerable companies risk becoming easy prey for criminal associations,” warns Raffaele Rio, specifying that they represent nearly 15% of the 48,000 companies in the sector in difficulty, in debt and without liquidity, which makes them vulnerable to “offers” of help from the mafia.
Mafia groups lend money to businesses under punitive conditions and use these troubled companies to launder money from criminal activities.
“The mafias are building a criminal welfare system that crushes entrepreneurs in difficulty,” assured Raffaele Rio.
“They promise financial survival, cover debts and guarantee liquidity, but at a very high price: control or total acquisition of companies,” he added.
“This perverse system not only strengthens the power of criminal families in the territory, but fuels a circuit of money laundering, usury and extortion which suffocates the legal economy of our country,” concluded Raffaele Rio.
