Crime doesn't pay?

Crime doesn't pay? It does for the Mafia, which is raking in $172 billion a year in Italy alone - nearly as much as General Motors does worldwide.

The figure - which works out to more than $473 million a day - is the estimate put forward today by Italy's chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, Pierluigi Vigna.

If estimates for other countries such as the US and Russia were taken into account, the Mafia's income could dwarf that of companies such as Wal-Mart and ExxonMobil, which have worldwide turnover of $336 billion and $292 billion respectively.

Vigna says the total is based on traditional Mafia concerns, such as the illegal sale of drugs and weapons, as well as its public tender and prostitution businesses.

"The biggest emergency we now face is economic crime," Vigna said during a debate in Rome on the economies of Italy's poor southern regions.

He revealed that in certain areas of Italy the Mafia effectively decided which brands of products could be sold in shops and which could not, "thereby distorting the market".

"If the real economy falls in the hands of criminals, then there is no more democracy," Vigna warned, noting that new forms of organised crime networks and activities were rapidly establishing themselves in the country.

Italy's traditional Mafia groups are Sicily's "Cosa Nostra", Calabria's "n'drangheta" and Apulia's "Sacra Corona Unita".

A fourth network, Campania's "Camorra", has made headlines in recent months because of a bloody turf war that has claimed dozens of victims.

 

...via smh