With revenues for 2013 of 53 billion euros, the Italian mafia Ndrangheta earned more than Deutsche Bank and McDonald's fast-food restaurant chain combined.
The income of the influential Italian mafia was calculated by the Demoskopika research center, whose employees managed to establish almost all of Ndrangheta's sources of profit. So, only drug trafficking brought the mafia 24.2 billion euros, and illegal landfill - 19.6 billion euros.
The worldwide famous organized crime group generated 3.5% of Italy’s total GDP in 2013.
All calculations were made on the basis of information available to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the country, the police, the commission on the fight against the mafia and a number of other state organizations. Moreover, Demoskopika also found out that Ndragengeta is a whole network of 400 managers in 30 countries, but about 60 thousand people can be involved in the activities of a criminal group.
Extortion and usury last year brought the Italian mafia 2.9 billion euros, while embezzlement replenished the "treasury" of the group by 2.4 billion euros, and gambling by 1.3 billion. Arms sales, prostitution, smuggling and human trafficking did not “flourish” in 2013: Ndrangheta managed to earn less than 1 billion euros on all these crimes.
Today, Ndrangetu, which has a whole army of hereditary gangsters in southern Italy in the Calabria region, is considered even more dangerous than the world-famous Sicilian mafia. Initially, Ndrangheta was an ordinary criminal group that specialized in various kinds of scams. It was created in Spain in 1412, but later the influence of this criminal group spread to the southern parts of Italy, where members of the organization did their best to expand their business. In Calabria, Ndrangheta succeeded thanks to numerous abductions for ransom.
Modern Italian mafia groups almost completely control all economic and criminal activities in Calabria, Sicily, parts of Campania and Apulia, and also continue to "get close" to Rome and Milan. The total revenue of Cosa Nostra, Ndrangheta and Camorra in 2013 amounted to 116 billion euros.
Last week, Pope Francis called on the Italian mafia to “stop doing evil.”
The head of the Catholic Church could not refrain from such comments after he met with victims of organized crime. “You still have a chance to avoid going to hell, where you will surely find yourself if you continue what you do,” the pontiff warned the mafia, reminding them that the money obtained by “blood” cannot be taken with you to heaven. “There will be no happiness in the life that you live now. The power and money that you got thanks to many “dirty” cases, crimes — money received by blood, power received by blood — you cannot take it with you in your next life. “Please change your destinies. Change. Stop doing evil, ”concluded Francis.
