Avvenire.it reports:  The prosecutor in Reggio Calabria has mounted operation “‘Ndrangheta banking” focusing on a bank which financed firms in Calabria and Lombardy.  While many factories closed, those in Mafia hands grew.  Assets totaling 110 million were seized in Naples from accounts that appear to be drug money from Camorra.

Corruption involving companies, administrators and politicians confirms the Mafia’s ability to infiltrate the construction business.  Fifty-five companies related to ‘Ndranghela’ were about to begin work on post earthquake projects.

Ninety percent of the businesses run by the Mafia and then taken over by the State fail.  A supermarket let 500 employees go after the State takeover.  The unemployed say, “The Mafia gave us work.  The State takes it away.”

Everywhere, from traditional sectors such as construction to innovative renewable energy, waste from supermarkets, from health care to welfare, dall’agroalimentare to tourism and gambling, you find the Mafia.  This Mafia no longer operates with gun shots and blasts of Kalashnikovs, although no one forgets them.  Instead they use dirty money,  corruption and apparently clean business support:  The financial and managerial face of the mafia.

The Clean face is only a mask, warns the prosecutor of Reggio Calabria, Federico Cafiero de Raho, long at the head of the DDA in Naples, a great connoisseur of the new dynamics of the Mafia businesswomen. He speaks of the “gauntlet of credit” provided by the clans.  Entrepreneurs must understand that they not only lose their money but also their safety and freedom.  The Mafia is here among us, manages business, finances, does the friendly face, and there are those who think to take advantage of. We never tire of quoting the words of a businessman from Calabria years under escort, “Here, there are entrepreneurs who pay protection money and others that are raking it in.”  When the Mafia arrive before judges it is always too late.