The already small space that their activities occupied in the news cycle has disappeared entirely, because public enemy no 1 is the virus. With public attention monopolised entirely by the Covid-19 epidemic, mafia syndicates can manoeuvre undisturbed. An even more profitable commodity is silence.
In March 2016, it was revealed that the ’ndrangheta had been working aggressively to establish itself in medical and pharmaceutical industries across Lombardy – which became Italy’s Covid-19 “Ground Zero” – even dispatching cartel operatives and their relatives to qualify in medicine, nursing and pharmacology.īut such business opportunities are not the only benefit epidemics bring to criminal organisations. These products are today almost impossible to find, and the sudden overwhelming demand (surely destined to continue over the coming months) has caused prices to skyrocket.įor the Calabrian mafia, the ’ndrangheta, this would be familiar territory: for years it made capital investments in the pharmaceutical and healthcare products sectors. In Italy, police have already raised the alarm about mafia cartels’ investment in the production and distribution of “epidemic kits”, comprising masks, hand sanitiser and latex gloves. All of these sectors have become fundamental to our survival over recent weeks, and will probably remain so for a good while. With their usual business acumen, criminal organisations have, in recent decades, invested in a number of companies that have turned out to be very relevant to the present crisis: multi-service businesses (catering, cleaning or disinfection), industrial laundries, transport, funeral homes, waste collection, food distribution – and health. The Covid-19 pandemic is already demonstrating this. The art of profit is based on exploiting need, and no one has perfected that dark art better than organised crime.
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