A poisoned paradise

Sorrento nightlife is some way from what we have in Wales - but what does the Mafia get from it?

EVERY night, something quite magical happens in the streets of Sorrento. The inhabitants of this Southern Italian city are joined by people from the surrounding hills, who descend from their olive, lemon and walnut groves to throng the thoroughfares together. Here, they meet randomly, go for coffee together, sometimes eat and most commonly shop.

To wander the packed medieval alleys, sampling fruit that redefines tastebuds, turns the consumer experience for the British on its head, used as we are to dull food from soulless supermarkets. But to stand still in the heart of the town, in Plazza Tasso, at 11pm on a Friday night, while contemplating what must be going on in St Mary Street in the centre of Cardiff at the same time, is to experience a new kind of culture shock. The comparison is stark: same continent, same economic union, different cultural galaxy.

But there’s trouble in paradise. Unseen and almost completely unheard, nearly all of the tourists of the UK who flock there in increasing numbers, particularly to marry, will move in and out of surrounding Campania never having realised that they have almost certainly contributed to one of the most successful but least visible criminal outfits on earth.

Across the bay from Sorrento and in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, the destroyer of Flavian Pompeii, lies Naples. No place in Italy better represents the stark difference between the prosperous North and the near-Third World south. Here, employment law and other EU legislation don’t count – unsurprisingly, as there is little willpower from above. Napoli became Italy’s pariah when its football fans chose to back their club’s star Maradona and his Argentine team ahead of their own national side in a 1986 group draw, and remains so until this day.

Behind the poverty and this outcast status lies the dead hand of the Camorra, although that’s not what its members and Neapolitans have named it, preferring simply il Sistema.

Getting used to how il Sistema operates takes a bit of getting used to for those of us who have grown up understanding only la Cosa Nostra. Whereas the Sicilians and the Americans operate pyramid structures of command, with the boss at the top of the apex, the Camorristi employ what Roberto Saviano (whose 2007 book Gamorrah was first to throw considerable light on this organisation) calls a “horizontal” way of working. Instead of a capo di tutti capi, a grand mastermind, overseeing the Camorra’s operations in southern Italy, Spain, Germany and – it has been known – the UK, there is an relatively disorganised collection of clans that operate within their own areas with their own business.

This has its drawbacks, not least in the form of turf wars. In 2004-05, the Di Lauro clan began the Secondigliano War in an attempt to prevent a breakaway by the Spagnoli (Spaniards – so-called because they co-ordinated the cocaine traffic from their Mediterranean neighbour). By the time it was through with, over 100 people were dead, many of them mere associates or girlfriends of gangsters.

However, in its organisation the Camorra has one distinct advantage over the Sicilians. If the boss of a clan is taken out, trade is hardly disrupted, if at all. Long before Islamism, il Sistema had perfected the model of Hydra-headed competency. In any case, wars are usually swiftly brought to a halt , as the Camorra seems to know better than anyone the old Mafia saying that “a drop of blood costs a gallon of gold”. And, above all, the Camorra are traders.

It already had the best cigarette smuggling operation in the world when it was persuaded in the 1970s to use those routes for narcotics. It quickly realised that the margin was in cocaine, and still prefers it above all other controlled drugs. It engages in usual organised crime activities, but it has really made a name for itself in counterfeit goods. Here, claims Saviano, the line between legal and illegal becomes blurred. He claims that most of the major fashion houses are happy to use Neopolitan sweat shops to produce its goods, as well as Camorra transportation networks, shops and malls, while turning a blind eye to the production of “true fakes”, reproductions that are so alike the original because they are made by the same hands.

Omerta, or the code of silence, exists among Campanians, but not for the reasons outsiders might presume. While Camorristi are more than happy to kill to keep people quiet, il Sistema’s emphasis on trade and its willingness to spread the wealth around a little means work opportunities in this dirt-poor region. Whereas the Sicilian Mafia keeps everything and cowes its people, the Neopolitan mercantile gift means that potenial informers are far more unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them.

Even in a relatively affluent place like Sorrento, an hour from Naples, Campanians are reluctant to talk. The most open are taxi drivers. It costs an outrageous amount – as much as 30 euros for a trip of a few hundred yards – to take a cab anywhere. “It breaks down like this,” said one driver. “You give me six, but if I drop you at a hotel, it’s 12 euros. And it’s twice as much again for the Mafia.” At first, it seems far-fetched. But then it is worth remembering that along the Amalfi Coast – one of the most prized stretches of coastline in the world – the hotels are run by local, often family-owned companies. This is a long way from saying that they are Mafia-controlled (although it is alleged that some are). However, it does beg the question why few of the big, global chains have seen fit to ignore the place.

“Once you begin to understand the payments, you see why Italy has a reputation for being expensive,” said another driver. While it is doubtful that this applies across the board, it is hard not to see Camorristi mark-up everywhere you go. This is not completely ridiculous as, according to a 2007 report from Confesercenti, Italy’s second-largest trade body, the clans control the milk and fish industries, the coffee trade, and over 2,500 bakeries across the city.

And they have fewer rules about honour and blood lines than the Sicilians, whose beliefs are more in keeping with other fractious islanders along the Med, such as the Corsicans and the Cretans. Daughters of Camorristi have cemented bonds by marrying gangsters of other countries, most notably Albanians, and the clans have been happy to give over towns to foreign gangs, such as Castel Volturno, run by the Rapaces, a Nigerian clan.

The Carabinieri continues to be successful in securing convictions, including most recently the arrests of 32 suspected members of the Casalesi clan, one of the most powerful and certainly most violent Camorristi gangs in Naples. Property and assets valued at over 50 million euros were also seized.

However, the demographics are against the police. There’s an estimated 4.4 million people in the Greater Naples area, where 19% are under 14, while only 13% are over 65-years-old. The city also has the highest birth rate in Italy, and many of them are being born into poverty. The area is placed 94th out of the total of 103 Italian provinces in Italy in terms of output (discounting the black market), while over one in four adults (28%) are unemployed.

These figures are conspiring to create a criminal tsunami, with fresh troops always available. As such the Camorra is now a problem for the EU, on many levels. Not only should we be committed to reducing quite frankly unacceptable poverty in southern Italy as part of our involvement in the Union, we should also feel compelled to bring greater opportunity to the region in order to remove the breeding ground for Camorristi. We should be doing it because clan leaders recognise no boundaries (there was even a case of an “Aberdeen Camorra”), and we should be doing it for every tourist who holidays in this beautiful paradise, and who shouldn’t be made to feel that there is two hands in their pocket every time they reach for their wallets.