The coronavirus pandemic offers an opportunity for Italy's mafias to expand and grow richer and more powerful, the national anti-mafia investigative directorate DIA said Friday.
It said the "economic paralysis" caused by the COVID crisis may ope up to the mafias "prospects of enrichment and expansion comparable to a postwar scenario".
The virus crisis offers the mafias the chance to get their hands on large and medium sized firms that are struggling or that have gone to the wall, the DIA said in its six-monthly report to parliament.
The report added that in 2019, 51 local bodies were dissolved for mafia infiltration, the highest number since 1991, when such action was made possible for the first time.
Italy's three main mafias are Calabria's 'Ndrangheta, Sicily's Cosa Nostra, and Campania's Camorra.
There is also an organised crime group in central Sicily, the Stidda, and a group in Puglia called Sacra Corona Unita (United Holy Crown, SCU).
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
