Italy's underworld has been hard hit
by the recession as protection rackets charge less to businesses
and the cost of providing for families of imprisoned mobsters
soars, Italian Police Chief Alessandro Pansa said Wednesday.
Speaking to a school for police officers, Pansa said
organised-crime gangs nevertheless are becoming "evermore
clever" at infiltrating legitimate business and financial
circles in a bid to recover from the economic crisis.
"Organised crime also is in difficulty," Pansa said. "The
crisis hits criminal organisations as well, so much so that they
have difficulty supporting the families of inmates, who are
numerous, and even the pizzo (protection money) is less
expensive than in previous years".
However such setbacks don't mean that crime clans are
defeated, the police chief cautioned.
"Organised crime is over time shifting its interests from
some forms of parasitic economic activity to more complex forms
of productive systems, both economic or financial," he
continued.
The Mob is increasing less in real estate and more in
private companies, he added.
"Crime gangs increasingly provide knowhow to companies
suffering from the recession, offering illegal finance,
black-market labour and illicit raw materials," the police chief
said.
Against this background the forces of law and order are
nevertheless "ready to meet the future challenges," Pansa
concluded.
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