Mafia getting into green economy, health sector - DIA

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 24 - The mafia is taking advantage of the COVID crisis to get into the Italian health sector and the green economy, the anti-mafia investigative directorate (DIA) said Wednesday.
    "There are serious risks of infiltration, and money laundering and corruption are growing," the DIA said in a new report.
    The COVID pandemic is a "great opportunity" for Italy's mafias and the speeding up of bidding procedures has brought "high risks of mafia infiltration into the legal economy, especially in the health sector," it said.
    It is also "exceedingly likely" that the mafias - 'Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra, and Camorra - will try to intercept funding fro major public works and the conversion to the green economy, it said.
    The three mafias have reined in their staples of drug trafficking, extortion, and robberies during the pandemic and upped activities of money laundering in northern and central Italy, as well as vote buying and corruption in the south, the report said.
    'Ndrangheta, from Calabria, is Italy's richest and most powerful mafia thanks to its control of the European cocaine trade.
    Cosa Nostra is its older Sicilian cousin.
    The Camorra is based in and around Naples but like the other two syndicates operates all over Italy and abroad. (ANSA).