The "Ndrangheta mafia from southern Italy made more than that last year McDonald's and Deutsche Bank together ", concluded in 2014 a study that found that the crime syndicate of Calabria cleaned billions every year from drug trafficking, illegal garbage management and other illegal activities.
The Demoskopika research institute even talked about a turnover of $ 53 billion in 2013 for Ndrangheta alone. But why Ndrangheta? Because it is less known than the other mafias, universal in its nature and action, a proper Lernaean Hydra with more heads than one could cut.
The amount that Demoskopika calculated how the Calabrian mafia made money that year corresponded to 3,5% of GDP of Italy! Drawing on data from the Ministries of Interior and Public Order, parliamentary committees against the mafia, but also national and international task force against organized crime, the institute outlined a detailed picture of what a mafia network of international standards and global repercussion means.
Ndrangheta engages in more than 400 "activities" in 30 countries, recruiting some 60.000 people across the length and breadth of the Earth, the study tells us. Extortion, usury, embezzlement, drug trafficking, gambling, trafficking in white meat, trafficking in arms, smuggling of goods, counterfeiting of goods, trafficking in human beings, money laundering and so much more, as if there is nothing illegal under the law. .
This was not, of course, the first or only attempt to financially value the black activities of organized crime. On the contrary! The impact of this dark industry of tens of billions on the traditional economy has long preoccupied national economies as well as international think tanks.
Although having safe numbers is not easy at all here, in an area where people are just struggling to make ends meet, there are many who have tried to give us an order of magnitude of its terms. discussion. The United States Agency for International Development estimates, for example, that cocaine sales in USA and is now an activity with an annual turnover of $ 34 billion.
But it is also the other, that despite the fact that organized crime is constantly looking for new ways to make money, the heavy artillery of its profits remains the core that makes up its traditional action. If the annual losses measured by the US from electronics eavesdropping personal data now reaches $ 20 billion, mobsters are not turned into hackers. They insist on what they know how to do well. From grandfather to grandfather!
But who is doing better? What are the largest criminal syndicates in terms of staff and profits? What are we waiting for or has the data on the criminal map changed?
Fortune magazine this time calculated the numbers, the same financial review that compiles the Fortune 500 index every year. Here is how things seem to be…
At a time when the infamous Japanese Yakuza is known for its strict structure and hierarchical function, the Russian mafia is at the other end of the business spectrum. According to Frederico Varese, a professor of criminology at Oxford and an expert in international organized crime, Bratva is completely decentralized.
Ten semi-autonomous "brigades" make up the largest branch of the Russian mafia, with independent activities and turnover each. The money they earn, however, is centrally controlled by a 12-member council that "often meets in different parts of the world, disguising their meetings as celebrations," the professor reveals.
Estimates of the number of members of the Bratva Muscovite, founded in the late 1980s, vary considerably here, but most studies place it at around 9.000 people. As for the main activities of this globalized network that reaches as far as the USA and the Israel, drug and human trafficking remain, with its tentacles reaching as far as the cocaine trade from Colombia.
The Russian mafia continues to hold the scepter in the heroin trade, an activity carried out by Afghanistan. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Russia consumes 12% of world heroin production, while accounting for less than 0,5% of the world's population.
As for the big picture of the Russian mafia, the relevant reports want it to consist of 450 different groups and to have over 300.000 members, holding in its hands 1/4 of the national economy! Its main feature? The fact that she is ruthless.
Russia's willingness to prosecute journalists, police and government officials would make other criminal unions blush with shame. The 2006 assassination of Andrey Kozlov, its vice president Central Bank of the Russian Federation which had declared a crusade against corruption, was a clear message that no one can chase the Russian mafia.
At the same time, Russian crime bosses are increasingly disengaged from the shackles of the black market, occupying legitimate businesses and investing in banks, ports and large industries. And of course the bloody clearing of accounts between them is now a thing of the past, as the gangs are now resolving their differences through productive dialogue and peaceful trade.
"Yakuza" is called in Japan what we call "mafia", a comprehensive term that includes many different things. Yamaguchi Gumi is the longest tentacle of this total monster, an oriental giant of corruption and illegality.
In fact, according to former Japanese police chief Hiromitsu Suganuma, Gumi is clearing far more than any other Yakuza branch of drug trafficking, gambling and blackmail.
Based in Kobe, Gumi accounts for about 45% of it Yakuza, giving direct employment to 20.400 people and indirectly to another 18.600 associates (39.000 members out of Yakuza's 86.300).
According to the National Police of Japan, only 102 people rule the empire of evil, ending up with one head. The organization operates across Asia and the United States, and its current leader, Shinobu Tsukasa, recently declared a pan-military outbreak from his cell to spread it even further. Even in Tokyo, an area that Gumi had not touched before!
Yakuza remains one of the most adequately organized and strictly ranked criminal gangs in human history. After all, it has plenty of centuries of life, and as Dennis McCarthy, author of An Economic History of Organized Crime, tells us, we must regard it as a regular company with "elaborate hierarchies."
In fact, the Japanese mafia has a long tradition of engaging with local politics and far-right groups of influence. And so it works without substantial fear of the law, with the spearhead of publicity and style. You see, Yakuza is not like other criminal unions operating from sunless basements, here everything is in the light.
Official offices, well-known headquarters, recognized headquarters, and even business cards have its members, distinguished by fancy costumes, characteristic tattoos with tigers and lost fingers, signs of failure. Her charitable actions and special care to avoid the collateral loss of innocent civilians have made Yakuza a strong popular base.
At a time when the Italian-American mafia has weakened in recent decades, the crime syndicate in "mom" Italy is holding up well. A study by the Transcrime Research Center at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan estimates that mafia companies generate $ 33 billion a year in revenue, an extremely lucrative pie shared by the four largest criminal organizations.
And the Neapolitan Camorra is the largest and most successful of all, making money from almost all illegal activities: "sexual exploitation, arms smuggling, drugs, forgeries, gambling… usury and extortion ", as typically mentioned in the study.
The historic Camorra of Campania has been alive since at least the 18th century, making Naples the epicenter of a criminal syndicate that sprang from prison and became actively involved in the political unrest of the last century. In contrast to the pyramidal organization of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the structure of the Camorra follows more horizontally than vertically. Its various tentacles operate independently of each other and family disputes are not absent at all.
The income of the Italian mafia has occupied much more international bodies than any other criminal syndicate. Foreign Policy magazine, for example, put the local mafia's turnover at $ 50 billion in 2005, confirming that the scepter is held by Camorra and Calabrian Ndrangheta, who also have more extroverted profiles. But also global representation.
The adventurous history of the Italian mafia and its relations with capital and policy have charted their own course in modern becoming. The Italian state has dealt a series of crushing blows to the Cosa Nostra in recent years, bringing the Sicilian mafia leadership to its knees. Only it is not the only one and definitely not the strongest…
Based in Calabria, Ndrangheta is currently the second richest mafia in Italy. And while engaged in the same illicit activities as the Camorra, it has followed a different business path, developing good links with criminal circles in Europe, Latin America, and even Australia, to the point where it now dominates the transatlantic route of drug trafficking in Europe.
According to Europol, Ndrangheta is believed to control 80% of cocaine arriving in Europe, laundering drug dollars in investments in the manufacturing sectors of Italy, Germany, Belgium and the United States. Especially in the USA, it now has a significant presence, establishing relations with the Italian-American mafia (such as the New York Gambino and Bonnano families) and expanding its activities on both sides of the Atlantic.
Even more terrifying than the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the special structure of the Ndrangheta makes it even more difficult to penetrate and clear. It consists essentially of a dense and interconnected network of mafia groups based in the greater Calabria region. This pattern of action is reverently followed from the times of its predecessor, the spiral of gamblers that made up Garduna and was founded in 1412 in Toledo. Spain.
Ndrangheta was made financially from the kidnappings and ransoms it owed in the 1960s and 1970s, laying the foundations for the black grandeur that would follow. Europol estimated its revenue at $ 2013 billion in 55 as "one of the richest and most powerful organized crime groups in the world."
As Ilaria Meli, a researcher at the University of Milan's Organized Crime Observatory, tells us, "Ndrangheta proved faster than Cosa Nostra in understanding and controlling a major drug market change," talking about how it has been involved since its inception. 1980s with cocaine. But also how he avoided the mistakes of the Cosa Nostra, when the latter put up with Italian government officials, ending up in double murder of Falcone and Borsalino which changed the surrounding atmosphere.
"Her problem today is that she has more money than she can use," said Giuseppe Catozzella, a researcher with the Italian criminal syndicate who owns a recording of a "bed bug" in which a "godfather" is heard he says heartily to the other about that cash register he dug out of the woods and saw "millions rotting because of the humidity."
What did the other person answer indifferently? "Well, throw them away"!
Mexico's largest drug cartel has been operating for years as a middleman between Latin American drugmakers and the vast US market. The White House Drug Control Bureau estimates that Americans spend more than $ 100 billion a year on the black market and more than $ 6,5 billion goes to the Mexican cartels.
Sinaloa controls a good 60% of the market despite the imprisonment of its leader, "El Tsapo" Gusman, remains stately and prosperous. And organizationally alive of course, as he masterfully avoided the bloody wars of succession that so many criminal unions have lived through.
Mexican cartels have even emerged on the fringes of US law enforcement success in ousting Colombian cartels from their territories. The gap in cocaine distribution left by the war between federal agents and Colombian "barons" was filled by the Tijuana cartels (mainly Sinaloa and Gulf), which had complete control over distribution channels along the borders with Arizona and Texas.
Only in Mexico the civil war and the redistribution of forces are still played out in the old terms, leaving hordes of decapitated corpses on the streets every now and then. Founded in the late 1980s, Sinaloa maintains control of global drug trafficking and money laundering, but not without bloodshed.
The United States Intelligence Community considers Sinaloa to be "the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world" and a producer of cannabis and opium. It remains America's main drug supplier and since 2017 its activities have even expanded to American soil, being the most active spiral in recent decades. It has now spread to Central and South America, most recently reaching Peru.
The ruthless war between the Mexican state and the cartel does not seem to have won for the time being. It is an open battle that is judged every time on points…