mafia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mafia was originally the name for a strictly hierarchical secret society that tries to consolidate and expand its power through blackmail, violence and political influence and has its roots in 19th century Sicily . Today the Sicilian Mafia is also known as Cosa Nostra . The Sicilian Mafia operates worldwide and has ties to other mafia-like groups.

Most of the Italian criminal organizations such as the Neapolitan Camorra , the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita are also assigned to the mafia term today. In addition, the term is being used more and more to refer to other organized crime organizations such as B. the “ Russian Mafia ”, the “ Albanian Mafia ”, the “Japanese Mafia” ( Yakuza ) or the “Chinese Mafia” ( triads ).

Etymology and conceptual history

The origin of the term Mafia is now assigned to very different sources (in particular Novacco (1959) and Lo Monaco (1990)).

A historical document from 1837 shows that the Attorney General of Trapani Pietro Calà Ulloa informed about mafia-like activities. To be more precise, he spoke of a group that bribed Sicilian politicians.

From the Arabic :

  • maha - cave or grotto ( mafie was the name given to protective caves in the Sicilian language in the area between Trapani and Marsala )
  • ma hias - show-off, arrogant, brazen, destroyer
  • mahfil - gathering, meeting place
  • mu'āfāh - exception, dispensation; Cure; protection
  • Ma'āfir - A Saracen tribe who ruled Palermo from 831 to 1072 .

From the Sicilian:

  • mafiusu , marfusu - arrogant, conceited, but also self-assured, courageous, beautiful (In inner Sicilian dialects a positive meaning of mafiusu has been preserved to this day. A word derivation from Arabic is assumed.)

From other Italian dialects:

  • malfusso - incredulous, discredited, criminal (from Tuscan, traceable since the 15th century)
  • mafia or maffia - poverty, need (Florentine dialect)
  • mafi , mafio or mafiun - short, misshapen person; Rüpel, farmer without manners, who neither speaks nor answers, thief (Piedmontese dialect, entered in the dialect dictionary of C. Zalli since 1830.)

According to Duden, the word has Arabic and Italian origins and means presumption . In Sicily it is said that the word goes back to the sentence Non toccare ma figlia (“Don't touch my daughter”) and that its origins refer to the intention of the Mafiosi to protect the honor of their family, but this is undoubtedly a later one Invention.

Acronyms :

  • MAFIA - " Morte Alla Francia, Italia Anela " = " Italy longs for the death of France" or " Morte Ai Francesi, Invasori, Assassini " = "Death to the French, invaders, murderers!" (According to legend, the battle cry and prelude to the Sicilian Vespers at the vespers hour on Easter Monday on March 31, 1282.)
  • MAFIA - “ Mazzini Autorizza Furti Incendi Avvelenamenti. "=" Mazzini orders robbery, arson and poisoning. "( Acrostic from the slogan of the secret society around Giuseppe Mazzini )

Other origins:

  • According to a legend, the Sicilian Vespers was triggered by a French occupation soldier who is said to have molested a pretty Palermitan girl. In his 1983 autobiography, Joe Bonanno , head of the Bonanno family named after him for many years, recounts that the mother's cry in the streets: "Ma - ffia, ma - ffia!" (My daughter, my daughter!) Later became the embodiment of the resistance developed, as a result of which the Anjou dynasty was expelled from Sicily.

Earliest written evidence 1585 as a witch's nickname, in the sense of hubris and lust for power.

The ultimately decisive coining of the term mafioso arose from the comedy I mafiusi di la Vicaria (The Mafiosi of the Vicaria Prison) set in the prison of Palermo , which premiered in 1863 and was soon translated from Sicilian into Italian, Milanese and Neapolitan. The comedy prompted the people of Palermo to name a criminal organization that was previously not uniformly named Mafia . In 1865, for example, the word “Maffia” for muggers or brigands appeared in a secret paper by Filippo Antonio Gualterios , then Prefect of Palermo. Gualterio writes about idlers, vagabonds, mafiosi and generally suspicious people. The term was also popularized through a government-initiated nationwide discussion of the problem.

In the case of ancestry from the Tuscan dialect, the spread of the mafia term in Sicily is likely after the landing of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1860), similar to other words from Tuscan. The earliest verifiable dictionary entry (Novo Vocabolario siciliano-italiano 1868) also contains the first etymological interpretation. There it says “Mafia. Neologism to denote actions, language, etc. of someone who wants to do the Bravo ( chi vuole fare il bravo ). … Collective term for all mafiusi (smàferi [sic!] Call themselves the henchmen ( sgherri ) in Tuscany ) ”. According to the ethnologist Giuseppe Pitrè , the term mafia existed before 1860 and referred to a mafiusu (courageous man) or a mafiusedda (beautiful, proud girl).

Already in 1875 the term can be traced in almost all European languages.

The mafia and organized crime

Mafia hierarchy

The Mafia is different from other forms of organized crime and criminal groups in their structure: the mafia of Sicilian origin consists of so-called family - which is not to families in the narrow sense of a pure here consanguinity is but a narrow, strictly hierarchically structured Group association made up of members of Sicilian origin - who follow a code . Each family member has to strictly adhere to the rules; In the past, violations, especially omertà , were usually punished with brutal means (including murder). The Mafia is above all a patriarchal organization. Women have no access to the hierarchy of the Mafia families, the members are exclusively men. Every mafia family has a head to whom every family member is obliged to be absolutely obedient. These leaders can, in turn, be headed by an upper boss (“capo dei capi” or “ capo di tutti i capi ”, boss of the bosses) who exercises unlimited power over all families. The hierarchy of the mafia is described in the article Cosa Nostra .

The mafia and who can be counted among them

Actually only the mafia of Sicilian origin can claim this name for themselves, but today other criminal organizations are assigned to the mafia term.

Italy
In 2009, 586 murders were committed in Italy , 90 of which are attributed to the Mafia (49 in Campania , 19 in Sicily , 11 in Calabria and 7 in Puglia ).

  • The country of origin of the Mafia is still firmly in their hands in many areas. The events in Naples, in which rival Camorra clans , among others , prove that the mafia is still present . dominated the drug trade in and around Naples, fought a bloody gang war. Since the escape of Paolo di Lauro , who was arrested in September 2005, there have been bloody clashes between the various Camorra families for supremacy, which between 2004 and 2005 killed almost 200 people.
  • In the bloody Mafia war in Palermo in the early 1980s, the Corleonesians, led by Totò Riina , gained dominion over the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. After Riina's arrest, Bernardo Provenzano , who was arrested himself in 2006 , replaced him . It is unclear whether the Cosa Nostra is currently controlled by a "boss of the bosses" like Riina or Provenzano. The various Mafia families are networked with one another, but act (almost) completely independently in their own territories.
  • The Calabrian 'Ndrangheta is now possibly one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Europe.
  • The Sacra Corona Unita is a mafia organization that was founded in Apulia in 1983 .
  • The Sicilian Stidda is a smaller mafia organization that originated in southern Sicily in the 1980s.

United States

Criminal alliances of the mafia type

The following criminal organizations are often summarized under the term Mafia , although they do not have the socio-historical context. These are therefore more likely to be described as organized crime , although there does not actually have to be a uniform organizational structure in all cases.

Albania

The Albanian Mafia are criminal gangs of the mafia type whose business areas include Trafficking in human beings and arms, money laundering, drug and cigarette smuggling and organ trafficking.

Asia

Germany

From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1930s, the ring clubs existed in Germany as associations of former prisoners. The Ringbrothers only accepted members who had served at least two years' imprisonment and organized prostitution, smuggling and armed robbery; detained members controlled them by inter alia. cared for their families while in custody.

After 1945, as the cigarette currency shows, mafia-like structures were ubiquitous. So-called elite crime (such as investment fraud ) is mostly not assigned to the mafia. The German judiciary does not recognize protection racketeering as a criminal offense.

Around 2016 there was criminal activity by large Arab families in Berlin and Bremen.

Greece

Especially in Crete, where illegal gun possession and vendetta are a historical tradition, there is a large hashish production, which makes Greece a large supplier. Greek gangster organizations are mainly active in Europe and operate more and more among other things. Cigarette smuggling, drug trafficking and in some cases also arms deals.

Colombia

Latin America was ruled by two Colombian drug cartels in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, which almost completely divided the Latin American and American cocaine markets between them. The most powerful was the Cali cartel , which controlled up to 80 percent of the cocaine trade with the United States. The much smaller Medellín cartel was known for its notorious boss Pablo Escobar , who among other things. through his crimes to one of the richest people in the world and for a short time to a seat in the Colombian Congress, but was shot dead by the police on the run in 1993 after a long manhunt.

Poland

In Poland the formation of mafia-like structures is closely linked to the collapse of communism . As a result of the temporary loss of control of state institutions and, in particular, as a result of the dissolution of the militia and the state security service from 1989, criminal alliances emerged, especially in the expanded metropolitan area of Warsaw and in Lower Silesia , which became rich through drug trafficking and theft in the 1990s. By the middle of the 2010s at the latest, however, numerous organized gangs were persecuted, expropriated and the respective leaders imprisoned through the use of targeted special investigators and the formation of the State Security Office.

The most famous criminal organizations were the “ Pruszków Group ”, which claimed the areas north, south and west of Warsaw, and the “ Wołomin Group ”, which claimed the areas east of the capital. The main sources of income for the two organizations, besides theft and smuggling, were protection rackets and contract killings . The arrests of important actors from both groups have largely curbed their activities. In the television series Odwróceni ( Eng . The Reverse ), which has been produced since 2007, the rise and fall of the “Pruszków Group” is the main theme.

Russia

The various criminal gangs that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the chaotic 1990s are often referred to as the "Russian Mafia". These not entirely mafia-like organizations are certainly the fastest developing and at the same time the most violent. Internationally, the Russian mafia is mainly represented in the United States and Western Europe. Well-known headquarters are z. B. New York , London and Berlin . After arms smuggling, the largest business division of the Russian Mafia is drug and human trafficking and money laundering. One of the more publicly known groups are the Vory v zakone .

Serbia

The Serbian mafia, also known as "Nasa Stvar", gained increasing prominence in the early 1970s. During this time, some well-known Serbian mafiosi went to Milan (Italy) and together they formed a large criminal organization. In the Yugoslav war and the associated crime, the Serbian mafia grew bigger and bigger. She is known for, inter alia. Arms and drug trafficking and extortion of protection money. It is active a lot in Europe (including Germany, Holland, Sweden) and also in America.

Turkey

In addition to traditional crimes such as drug trafficking, prostitution and credit fraud, the Turkish mafia is also said to be involved in child trafficking, kidnapping and organ trafficking. The Turkish mafia controls around a quarter of the Turkish economy. This emerges from a report published by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce in the Turkish capital on June 7, 2004.

United States

The Kosher Nostra was a mafia-like alliance mainly in New York City in the 1930s. Murder, Inc. , operated jointly with the American company Cosa Nostra , has hundreds of murders attributed to it. It got its name based on the name "Cosa Nostra" and the predominantly Jewish descent of gang members such as Meyer Lansky , Bugsy Siegel and Dutch Schultz . Lansky, in particular, was a childhood friend of Lucky Luciano and both were instrumental in forming the National Crime Syndicate . However, the Kosher Nostra disappeared with the death of the first generation of mobsters , as the formation of criminal gangs was given up due to the rise in society.

Mafia and politics

In the case of Italy, fascism under Mussolini was evidently an opponent of the mafia, and at the same time the most radical and successful. By applying the totalitarian state order, it was possible to push the mafia back to insignificance within a few years. As the downside of this success and at the same time important for clarifying the Mafia phenomenon, fascism confronts the Mafia less as an opponent, but rather as an unequal competitor. This “Mafia bond” of totalitarian states is also visible where, in the opposite case, with the collapse of non-democratic regimes (such as the states of the former Eastern Bloc ), a sometimes rapid development of the Mafia can be observed. Former functionaries from the secret service, the political party and the state economy are particularly noticeable.

The specialty of the Mafia, i.e. the amalgamation of organized crime and the state, is only possible to the extent that it expresses a widespread mentality that is deeply rooted in the people. Luciano Violante (head of the Anti-Mafia Commission in the 1990s) describes their intrusion into the government using the case of Italy : “The mafia is trying more and more to intrude directly into politics and is even putting up its own candidates. So you have to keep your eyes open and react sharply ”…“ For the mafia it is not so much the problem of finding connections with national politicians, the mafia wants to make money. It is therefore important for the Cosa Nostra to smuggle politicians into the institutions at the local and regional level. All parties would have to deal with the danger of being involved in the Mafia. "

A popular stance against state order penetrates on the one hand all instances of publicly visible political life, on the other hand it organizes hierarchically structured decision-making bodies, including executive bodies. Vincenzo Calcara reports on the day of his ritual admission: “The Cosa Nostra does not recognize the authority of the state to which it has always stood and will stand. We don't care about the state. Our home is the Mafia family, which we have to defend to the last drop of blood "

The mafia always tried to be intertwined with social institutions. In June 2014, the newly elected Pope denounced this de facto tolerance by the Catholic Church with the words “The mafia is the admiration of evil, the disregard for the common good” .

Mafia state

Alexander Litvinenko may have first used the term Mafia State in 2004 . A mafia state is not only possible if a state is captured by the underworld, but can also be transformed into it from above. The similarity consists in the presence of a "godfather" who controls the totally loyal family and distributes the wealth and property rights of the land to his service nobility . Stephan Bierling describes Russia under Vladimir Putin as "the most advanced in converting the country into a mafia state" and the opposition Russian politician Grigori Jawlinski also used this expression.

Mafia and economy

From a certain point of the accumulation of economic resources from crime - in a second step - the establishment of structures for money laundering becomes the strategic starting point for social and international development from the classic to the modern mafia. With the third step, the investment of the laundered money, she strips off the last remnants of the appearance of her "archaic features". The mafia infiltrates a country's economy and ultimately the international financial markets as a “clean investor”. If the infiltration goes far enough, the mafia in the predestined regions will become an economic factor that can surpass the state-controlled.

The consideration of the mafia consists on the one hand of a communal nature such as the building of hospitals with free medical care and other social activities for the benefit of the immediate environment, whereby the mafia appears as a serious competitor to a state that either cannot provide social communal services or is unwilling to do so. Such activities are known from the Medellin cartel, for example, but also from organizations such as the Cosa Nostra and the 'Ndrangheta. This strives for solidarity between the population and the Mafia. Other considerations consist of providing personal benefits, for example in the distribution of state construction contracts or in filling positions in the public service. As a result of the undermining, the economic and administrative relapse behind other regions of the country and, as a result, emigration can be observed. As a result, economic aid is common and with it the strengthening of the Mafia, which controls the administration of this aid according to its influence.

In a report by the second largest Italian trade and entrepreneur association “Confesercenti”, dated October 22, 2007 in the Corriere della Sera , the amount of the annual protection racket is estimated at 40 billion euros. According to the report, seven out of ten entrepreneurs in Sicily are supposed to pay protection money to the mafia, in Calabria it is half of all companies. Thanks to the cooperation of many large companies, the Mafia has become a monopoly in these areas. Supermarkets paid around 5,000 euros per year to the mafia, construction companies around 10,000 euros per construction site.

"The Mafia's vise caused around 165,000 commercial activities to cease between 2004 and 2006 and 50,000 hotels to close."

- Handelsblatt , October 23, 2007

The number of of extortion damaged dealers was estimated in 2007 at about 160,000 per year, about 150,000 were also victims of usurers. The Prodi government then announced a series of new laws. B. easier expropriation of mafia-ruled companies should be possible.

Wikileaks has published some reports from the American consul on the southern Italian mafia organizations from 2008. Organized crime is cited as one of the most important factors in explaining why the southern Italian economy lags so far behind the rest of the Italian economy. According to different estimates, organized criminal organizations are said to earn tens to several hundred billion euros annually and “employ” up to 20,000 people. Legal economic activities are mainly in Campania, Calabria and Sicily through usury, fraud in the award of v. a. hindered by construction contracts, as well as by extorting protection money.

A newly published in recent years, mafia-like shape, which is a strong interdependence between business and organized crime, is the so-called ecomafia ( Ökomafia ). The term, which was invented by the Italian environmental protection organization Legambiente , does not designate a specific organization, but rather the criminal activity itself. This includes in particular illegal business in the disposal , construction and food industries ( see also: cheese scandal in Italy ). In its report Ecomafia 2008 , Legambiente puts the turnover achieved in Italy in 2007 at over 18 billion euros. The so-called ecomafia is an increasingly important branch of the economy for organized crime and, among other things, plays a decisive role in the waste crisis in the Campania region that has been going on for 15 years .

Return of the Mafia after 1945

The Americans had established close contacts with the US branch of the Mafia during World War II. Lucky Luciano was one of the key people . After the successful military liberation operation, the entire administration of the island of Sicily had to be rebuilt. The Mafia succeeded in reorganizing itself and settling in local and regional offices.

present

Today “Mafia” is an international synonym for organized crime . "Mafia" is set equal to violent and verschworenen secret societies and criminal clans that in the prostitutes , the trafficking , the drug trade press and their income from extortion , in particular the extortion , illegal gambling and payout surreptitiously or subsidy fraud denies. The criminal infiltration of legal economic sectors continues to be a rewarding “business area”: the construction industry, housing industry, waste disposal, gastronomy, official banking and finance. The mafia tries to bring the "profits" into the normal economic cycle and thus to legalize them. According to a report by the SOS Impresa group, the Mafia took over the role of “bank number 1” in Italy during the economic crisis with liquid funds amounting to 65 billion euros .

Despite numerous important arrests, a new leadership team is constantly forming within the Sicilian Cosa Nostra . The current alleged boss is Matteo Messina Denaro , who has been wanted for membership in the Mafia since 1993 .

Fight against the Mafia

Authorities

International

  • Interpol is the second largest organization in the world after the UN . The management of the national police authorities in Europe is increasingly being handed over to the European police authority Europol , which was founded in 1996 . See also: Europol in relation to Interpol .

National

Important opponents of the Mafia

Germany

  • Mafia? No thanks! is an association founded in Berlin in 2007 to raise awareness of the dangers that the presence of Italian Mafia organizations in Germany brings with it. Members include the Italian MP Laura Garavini and the journalist and author Sandro Mattioli , who researches and reports on the Mafia in Germany.

Italy

  • Paolo Borsellino was among others. Prosecutor in the major mafia trials and was murdered by the mafia on July 19, 1992.
  • Antonino Caponnetto was the chief judge of the investigative commission that led to the first major mafia trial.
  • Rocco Chinnici was a Sicilian prosecutor, among others. in the first so-called maxi-trial against the mafia in Palermo. He was the founder of the anti-mafia pool of Palermo and foster father, among others. by Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone. Chinnici was murdered by the Mafia on July 29, 1983.
  • Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was among others. General of the Carabinieri and was murdered by the Mafia on September 3, 1982.
  • Gaetano Costa was the chief prosecutor and was murdered by the Mafia on August 6, 1980.
  • Giuseppe Diana was a priest who was born in the Camorra stronghold of Casal di Principe and worked there. He campaigned against the Camorra and the Omertà and ran various social projects. He received nationwide recognition in 1991 when he had the document he wrote “Per amore del mio popolo non tacerò” ( For the love of my people I will not be silent ) distributed in all the churches of Casal di Principe and the surrounding area . He was murdered by the Camorra on March 19, 1994, his name day.
  • Giovanni Falcone was among others. Prosecutor in the major mafia trials and was murdered by the mafia on May 23, 1992.
  • Giorgio Boris Giuliano was a senior police officer and was murdered by the Mafia on July 21, 1979.
  • Libero Grassi was a Sicilian entrepreneur who publicly defended himself against the extortion of protection money by the Mafia in the early 1990s , making him one of the first to address this problem on a national level. He was murdered by the Mafia on August 29, 1991.
  • Giuseppe Impastato was an Italian politician and was murdered by the Mafia on the night between May 8 and 9, 1978.
  • Giuseppe Insalaco was an Italian politician and former mayor of Palermo. In July 1984, after only three months, he resigned from his post as mayor in protest against the involvement between politics and the Mafia that is obviously common in Palermo. He was murdered by the Mafia on January 12, 1988.
  • Rosario Livatino was a Sicilian public prosecutor who was one of the first to use mafia property confiscation as a means of fighting the mafia. He was murdered by the Mafia on September 21, 1990 at the age of almost 38 years.
  • Piersanti Mattarella was an Italian politician and former president of the Sicily Region. During his tenure from 1978 onwards, he publicly condemned the entanglement between politics (regional offices and some of his own party colleagues) and the Mafia. He was murdered by the Mafia on January 6, 1980 during his tenure.
  • Beppe Montana was a Sicilian police officer and head of the police force in Palermo responsible for the arrest of wanted Mafia members. Together with several police colleagues, he led the investigation into the Pizza Connection case . He was murdered by the Mafia on July 28, 1985. A few days later, on August 6, 1985, his work colleagues Roberto Antiochia and Antonino Cassarà were also murdered by the Mafia. The injured Natale Mondo was finally murdered by the mafia on January 14, 1988.
  • Leoluca Orlando is a politician and lawyer and was a. 1985-2000 Mayor of Palermo , where he tried to push back the influence of the Mafia in Sicilian everyday life with a diverse project of civil renewal. The actual role of Orlando as an opponent of the Mafia, however, is controversial and has been several times, including on the part of mafia hunters like Falcone, has been described as pure rhetoric . In his role as Mayor of Palermo in 1990, Orlando was responsible for the split in the fight against the mafia in 1990 with his attempt to create a counterpoint to the anti-mafia pool, and was heavily criticized for this. Here Orlando did not always make statements that corresponded to the actual state of the investigation about ongoing proceedings, which he described as closed, which led to sometimes violent, publicly fought verbal battles with the then head of the anti-mafia pool Giovanni Falcone. Several proceedings against Orlando related to corruption and irregularities in the award of public contracts have been archived.
  • Salvatore Pappalardo was retired Archbishop of Palermo and was best known for his fearless speeches against the Mafia and his opposition to the silence that favored the Mafia.
  • Pino Puglisi was a Sicilian priest and from 1990 pastor in the Brancaccio district of Palermo, stronghold of the Mafia, where he campaigned against the Mafia and the Omertà and initiated various social projects. He was murdered by the Mafia on September 15, 1993, the day of his 56th birthday.
  • Roberto Saviano received the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 2009 for his engagement against the Mafia . He achieved world fame precisely with his factual novel "Gomorrah", for which he was covertly researching an influential mafia clan. But this also earned him numerous death threats from the Mafia.
  • Giovanni Spampinato
  • Cesare Terranova was a. chief prosecutor and was murdered by the Mafia on September 25, 1979.

Switzerland

  • Carla Del Ponte is a Swiss lawyer; from 1981 she was public prosecutor for the canton of Ticino and from 1994 to 1999 Swiss federal prosecutor. In these two functions she was among others. in collaboration with Giovanni Falcone in the fight against money laundering and organized crime.

United States

  • Joseph D. Pistone was an undercover FBI agent who exposed a New York Mafia family.
  • Eliot Ness was among others. Chicago tax officer during the alcohol prohibition era .
  • Rudolph Giuliani had great success fighting the five New York families in the early 1980s. As the chief district attorney for New York City, he succeeded in getting four of the five heads of families sentenced to sometimes life imprisonment. His involvement in the fight against the Mafia, also later as Lord Mayor of New York City, is also based on the fact that his father, an immigrant from northern Italy, once had to give up a business due to reprisals by the Mafia.

Films and documentaries

literature

Web links

Commons : Mafia  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Mafia  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Scientific Article

Journalistic articles

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Origin of the Mafia - its roots in Sicily - MafiaLexikon . In: MafiaLexikon . March 4, 2017 ( mafialexikon.de [accessed March 5, 2017]). Origin of the Mafia - its roots in Sicily - MafiaLexikon ( Memento from March 5, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  2. The Duden. Volume 5: Foreign dictionary . 7th edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim 2001, ISBN 3-411-04057-2 .
  3. ^ Joseph Bonanno: A Man of Honor. Buccaneer Books, 1998, ISBN 1-56849-722-9 .
  4. ISTAT : Delitti denunciati dalle Forze di polizia all'Autorità giudiziaria . Tavola 3 (Table 3) (Italian)
  5. www.tagesspiegel.de
  6. welt.de: Berlin's underworld is lost to the Arab clans
  7. Bettini 1994, 86-88.
  8. Church and Mafia: Kneeling before the Criminals , Spiegel Online from July 24, 2014, accessed on July 24, 2014
  9. ^ Bálint Magyar (ed.): Twenty-Five Sides of a Post-Communist Mafia State . Central European University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-615551362-6 , pp. 644 ff.
  10. Stephan Bierling: How democracies become mafia states , NZZ, May 14, 2018
  11. You are here! Echo Moskvy , November 16, 2018
  12. "Italy's largest company. Die Mafia GmbH “ ( Memento from September 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), Tagesschau , October 22, 2007.
  13. 90 billion sales. The mafia dominates the economy . In: Handelsblatt , October 23, 2007.
  14. Tobias Piller: The largest company in Italy. ( Memento from October 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) FAZ , October 23, 2007.
  15. Wikileaks : Organized Crime In Italy II: How Organized Crime Distorts ( Memento of January 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), (ID: 08NAPLES37), cable of December 2, 2008, published January 7, 2011, accessed January 14 2011. Also available online at the La Repubblica daily newspaper : racconta.repubblica.it
  16. As with all criminal organizations, the estimates of the money actually "generated" by the Mafia vary widely. The following organizations have tried: the entrepreneurs' association Conferescenti (in 2007: 90 billion or 7% of GDP), the Italian statistical institute ISTAT (in 2007: 18% of GDP), the Rocco Chinnici Foundation , the Eurispes Institute (Cosa Nostra: 8 billion, Camorra: 12 billion, Ndrangheta: 36 billion), CENSIS , the Italian financial police (2005: 500 to 1,000 billion (all illegal activities, including those outside the Mafia)).
  17. ^ Il contributo mafioso alla vittoria Alleata in Sicilia . InStoria (Italian)
  18. ^ Organization: Mafia is now "Italy's largest bank" . Reuters, January 11, 2012.
  19. ^ "Wanted" file by Matteo Messina Denaro ( Memento from June 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Italian Ministry of the Interior (Italian)
  20. ↑ A wanted man for Matteo Messina Denaro. ( Memento from May 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Rai - Chi l'ha visto (Italian)
  21. ^ Repubblica, May 22, 1990 (Italian)
  22. "Telejato: Television against the Mafia" ( Memento from January 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), cafebabel.com, November 18, 2008.