As the Covid-19 death toll grows, Italy’s organised crime gangs have been looking to make millions. Many Italians feel they have no option but to accept the lifeline the mob is offering.
On the island of Sicily, the brother of a mafioso – a member of a mafia group – has been distributing food to the poor in a neighbourhood of Palermo.
“People ring me and they cry over the phone,” he says. “They say their children can’t eat. A young woman has been calling me every single day. She has five kids and doesn’t know how to feed them.”
He wouldn’t confirm that he was part of the mafia himself, but he said that if being a mafioso meant helping people, then he was “proud to be a mafioso”.
The coronavirus is new, but distributing food parcels to the needy is an old mafia tactic.
“The aim is to gain credibility and to step in as an alternative to the state,” says Nicola Gratteri, an anti-mafia investigator and head of the prosecutor’s office in Catanzaro, in Calabria.
The goal is to strengthen a base of support, he says.
Italy’s economy has been in a bad way for years, with high unemployment and slow economic growth. The lockdown tipped some people over the edge into desperation. But accepting even the smallest help from a mafioso is extremely dangerous.
“The mafia has never done anything out of generosity. That concept doesn’t exist for them,” says Enza Rando who works for an anti-mafia organisation. “All they know is “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’.”
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