The Camorra is a
Mafia-type
criminal organization, or
secret society, originating in the region of
Campania and its capital
Naples
in Italy.
It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy,
dating back to the 18th century.
Background
The origins of the Camorra are not entirely clear. It may date back
to the 16th century as a direct descendant of a
Spanish
secret society, the
Garduña,
founded in 1417. Officials of the Spanish
Kingdom of Naples may have introduced the organization to the area,
or it may have grown gradually out of small criminal gangs operating
among the poor in Neapolitan society near the end of the 18th century.[1]
The first official use of the word dates from 1735, when a royal
decree authorised the establishment of eight gambling houses in Naples.
The word is almost certainly a blend of "capo"
(boss) and a Neapolitan street game, the "morra".[1][2]
(In this game, two persons wave their hands simultaneously, while a
crowd of surrounding gamblers guess, in chorus, at the total number of
fingers exposed by the principal players.)[3]
This activity was prohibited by the local government, and some people
started making the players pay for being “protected” against the passing
police.[1][4][5]
Camorristi in Naples, 1906
The Camorra first emerged during the chaotic power vacuum in the
years between 1799-1815, when a Neapolitan Republic was proclaimed on
the wave of the
French Revolution and the
restoration of the
Bourbon dynasty. The first official mention of the Camorra as an
organisation dates from 1820, when police records detail a disciplinary
meeting of the Camorra, a tribunal known as the Gran Mamma. That
year a first written statute, the frieno, was also discovered,
indicating a stable organisational structure in the underworld. Another
statute was discovered in 1842, including initiation rites and funds set
aside for the families of those imprisoned. The organisation was also
known as the Bella Società Riformata, Società dell’Umirtà
or Onorata Società.[6][7]
The evolution into more organized formations indicated a qualitative
change: the Camorra and camorristi were no longer local gangs
living off theft and extortion; they now had a fixed structure and some
kind of hierarchy. Another qualitative leap was the agreement of the
liberal opposition and the Camorra, following the defeat in the 1848
revolution. The liberals realized that they needed popular support to
overthrow the king. They turned to the Camorra and paid them, the
camorristi being the leaders of the city’s poor. The Camorra effectively
had developed into power brokers in a few decades.[6]
The Camorra was never a coherent whole nor a centralised
organization. Instead, it has always been a loose confederation of
different, independent groups or families. Each group was bound around
kinship ties and controlled economic activities which took place in its
particular territory. Each family clan took care of its own business,
protected its territory, and sometimes tried to expand at another
group’s expense. Although not centralized, there was some minimal
coordination, to avoid mutual interference. The families competed to
maintain a system of checks and balances between equal powers.[8]
One of the Camorra’s strategies to gain social prestige is political
patronage. The family clans became the preferred interlocutors of local
politicians and public officials, because of their grip on the
community. In turn, the family bosses used their political sway to
assist and protect their clients against the local authorities. Through
a mixture of brute force, political status, and social leadership, the
Camorra family clans imposed themselves as middlemen between the local
community and bureaucrats and politicians at the national level. They
granted privileges and protection, and intervened in favour of their
clients in return for their silence and connivance against local
authorities and the police. With their political connections, the heads
of the major Neapolitan families became power brokers in local and
national political contexts, providing Neapolitan politicians with broad
electoral support, and in return receiving benefits for their
constituency.[8]
Activities
Compared to the
Sicilian
Cosa Nostra's pyramidal structure, the Camorra has more of a
'horizontal' than a 'vertical' structure. As a result, individual
Camorra clans act independently of each other, and are more prone to
feuding among themselves. This however makes the Camorra more resilient
when top leaders are arrested or killed, with new clans and
organizations germinating out of the stumps of old ones. As the
Galasso clan boss
Pasquale Galasso once stated in court; "Campania can get worse
because you could cut into a Camorra group, but another ten could emerge
from it."[9]
In the 1970s and 1980s
Raffaele Cutolo made an attempt to unify the Camorra families in the
manner of the Sicilian Mafia, by forming the
New Organized Camorra (Nuova Camorra Organizzata or NCO),
but this proved unsuccessful.
Drive-by shootings by camorristi often result in casualties
among the local population, but such episodes are often difficult to
investigate because of widespread
Omertà
(code of silence). According to a report from Confesercenti, the
second-largest Italian Trade Organization, published on October 22, 2007
in the
Corriere della Sera, the Camorra control the milk and fish
industries, the coffee trade, and over 2,500 bakeries in the city.[10]
In 1983, Italian law enforcement estimated that there were only about
a dozen Camorra clans. By 1987, the number had risen to 26, and in the
following year, a report from the Naples flying squad reported their
number as 32. Currently it is estimated there are about 111 Camorra
clans and over 6,700 members in Naples and the immediate surroundings.[11]
Roberto Saviano, an investigative journalist and author of
Gomorra, an exposé of the activities of the Camorra, says that
this sprawling network of Camorra clans now dwarfs the
Sicilian Mafia, the
'Ndrangheta and southern Italy's other organised gangs, in numbers,
in economic power and in ruthless violence.[12]
In 2004 and 2005 the
Di Lauro clan and the so-called
Scissionisti fought a bloody feud which came to be known in the
Italian press as the
Scampia feud. The result was over 100 street-killings. At the end of
October 2006 a new series of murders took place in Naples between 20
competing clans, that cost 12 lives in 10 days. The Interior Minister
Giuliano Amato decided to send more than 1,000 extra police and
Carabinieri to Naples to fight crime and protect tourists.[13]
It didn't help much – in the following year there were over 120 murders.[citation
needed]
In recent years, various Camorra clans have been forming alliances
with
Nigerian drug gangs and the
Albanian Mafia, even going so far as to intermarry.[citation
needed] For instance,
Augusto La Torre, the former
La Torre clan boss who became a
pentito,
is married to an Albanian woman. It should also be noted that the first
foreign pentito, a Tunisian, admitted to being involved with the feared
Casalesi clan of
Casal di Principe. The first town that the Camorra gave over to be
completely governed by a foreign clan was
Castel Volturno, which was given to the Rapaces, clans from
Lagos and
Benin City in
Nigeria.
This allowed them to traffic cocaine and women indentured to sex slavery
before sending them across the whole of Europe.[14]
Garbage crisis
Since the mid-1990s, the Camorra has taken over the handling of
garbage disposal in the region of
Campania, with
disastrous results for the environment and the health of the general
population.
Heavy metals,
industrial waste, chemicals and household
garbage
are frequently mixed together, then dumped near roads and burnt to avoid
detection, leading to severe soil and air pollution.
With the assistance of private businessmen known as "stakeholders",
the numerous Camorra clans are able to gain massive profits from
under-the-table contracts with local, legitimate businesses. These
"stakeholders" are able to offer companies highly lucrative deals to
remove their waste at a significantly lower price. With little to no
overhead, Camorra clans and their associates see very high profit
margins. According to author
Roberto Saviano, the Camorra
employs children to drive the waste in for a small price, who do not
complain about the health risks as the older truckers might.
As of June 2007, the region has no serviceable dumping sites, and no
alternatives have been found. Together with corrupt local officials and
unscrupulous industrialists from all over Italy, the Camorra has created
a cartel that has so far proved very difficult for officials to combat.[15]
Efforts
to fight the Camorra
The Camorra has proven to be an extremely difficult organization to
fight within Italy. At the first mass trial against the Camorra in
1911-12, Captain
Carlo Fabroni of the
Carabinieri gave testimony on how complicated it was to successfully
prosecute the Camorra: "The Camorrist has no political ideals. He
exploits the elections and the elected for gain. The leaders distribute
bands throughout the town, and they have recourse to violence to obtain
the vote of the electors for the candidates whom they have determined to
support. Those who refuse to vote as instructed are beaten, slashed with
knives, or kidnapped. All this is done with assurance of impunity, as
the Camorrists will have the protection of successful politicians, who
realize that they cannot be chosen to office without paying toll to the
Camorra."[16]
The trial that investigated the murder of the Camorrista
Gennaro Cuocolo was followed with great interest by the newspapers
and the general public. It led to the conviction of 27 leading Camorra
bosses, who were sentenced to a total of 354 years of imprisonment,
including the head of the Camorra at the time,
Enrico Alfano.[17][18]
Unlike the Mafia, which has a clear hierarchy and a division of
interests, the Camorra’s activities are much less centralized. This
makes the organization much more difficult to combat through crude
repression.[19]
In
Campania, where unemployment is high and opportunities are limited,
the Camorra has become an integral part of the fabric of society. It
offers a sense of community and provides the youth with jobs. Members
are guided in the pursuit of criminal activities, including cigarette
smuggling, drug trafficking, and theft.[20]
The government has made an effort to combat the Camorra's criminal
activities in Campania. The solution ultimately lies in Italy’s ability
to offer values, education and work opportunities to the next
generation. However, the government has been hard pressed to find funds
for promoting long term reforms that are needed to improve the local
economic outlook and create jobs.[20]
Instead, it has had to rely on limited law enforcement activity in an
environment which has a long history of criminal tolerance and
acceptance, and is governed by a
code of silence or
omertà
that persists to this day.[21]
Despite the overwhelming magnitude of the problem, law enforcement
officials continue their pursuit. The Italian police are coordinating
their efforts with
Europol
at the European level as well as
Interpol to conduct special operations against the Camorra. The
Carabinieri and the Financial Police (Guardia
di Finanza) are also fighting criminal activities related to tax
evasion, border controls, and money laundering. Prefect Gennaro Monaco,
Deputy Chief of Police and Chief of the Section of Criminal Police cites
"impressive results" against the Camorra in recent years, yet the
Camorra continues to grow in power.[22]
In 1998, police took a leading Camorra figure into custody.
Francesco Schiavone was caught hiding in a secret apartment near
Naples behind a sliding wall of granite. The mayor of Naples, Antonio
Bassolino, compared the arrest to that of Sicilian Mafia chief
Salvatore Riina in 1993.[23]
Francesco Schiavone is now serving a life sentence after a criminal
career which included arms trafficking, bomb attacks, armed robbery, and
murder.
Michele Zagaria, a senior member of the Casalesi clan, was arrested
in 2011 after eluding police for 16 years. He was found in a secret
bunker in the town Casapesenna, near Naples.
The arrests in the Campania region demonstrate that the police are
not allowing the Camorra to operate without intervention. However,
progress remains slow, and these minor victories have done little to
loosen the Camorra's grip on Naples and the surrounding regions.[20]
Outside
Campania and Italy
Despite its origins, it presently has important ramifications in
other Italian regions, like
Lombardia,[24][25][26]
Piedmont[27][28]
and
Emilia-Romagna,[29][30]
in connection with the centers of national economic power. It has also
spread outside the Italy's boundaries, and acquired a foothold in
United Kingdom and
United States.
Camorra
in the United States
The
Camorra existed in USA between the mid-19th century and early 20th
century. They rivaled the defunct
Morello crime family for power in
New
York. Eventually, they melded with the early Italian-American
Mafia groups.
Many Camorra members and associates fled the internecine gang warfare
and Italian Justice and emigrated to the
United States in the 1980s. In 1993, the
FBI estimated that there were 200 Camorristi in the United States.
Although there appears to be no clan structure in the United States,
Camorra members have established a presence in
Los Angeles,
New
York and
Springfield, Massachusetts.[31]
The Camorra is the least active of all the organized crime groups in the
United States.[32]
In spite of this, the US law enforcement considers the Camorra to be a
rising criminal enterprise, especially dangerous because of its ability
to adapt to new trends and forge new alliances with other criminal
organizations.[33]
According to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation:
- "In the 1970s, the Sicilian Mafia convinced the Camorra to
convert their cigarette smuggling routes into drug smuggling routes
with the Sicilian Mafia's assistance. Not all Camorra leaders
agreed, leading to the Camorra Wars that cost 400 lives. Opponents
of drug trafficking lost the war. The Camorra made a fortune in
reconstruction after an earthquake ravaged the Campania region in
1980. Now it specializes in cigarette smuggling and receives payoffs
from other criminal groups for any cigarette traffic through Italy.
The Camorra is also involved in money laundering, extortion, alien
smuggling, robbery, blackmail, kidnapping, political corruption, and
counterfeiting. It is believed that nearly 200 Camorra affiliates
reside in this country, many of whom arrived during the Camorra
Wars."[34]
In 1995, the Camorra cooperated with the
Russian Mafia in a scheme in which the Camorra would bleach out US
$1.00 dollar bills and reprint them as $100s. These bills would then be
transported to the
Russian Mafia for distribution in 29 post-Eastern
Bloc countries and former
Soviet republics.[31]
In return, the Russian Mafia paid the Camorra with property (including a
Russian bank) and firearms, smuggled into Eastern Europe and Italy.[33]
Camorra
in the United Kingdom
Scotland has had its brush with the Camorra.
Antonio La Torre of
Aberdeen,
Scotland was the local "Don" of the Camorra. He is the
brother of Camorra boss Augusto La Torre of the La Torre clan which had
its base in
Mondragone,
Caserta.
The La Torre Clan's empire was worth hundreds of millions of euros.
Antonio had several legitimate businesses in Aberdeen, whereas his
brother Augusto had several illegal businesses there. He was convicted
in Scotland and is awaiting extradition to Italy. Augusto would
eventually become a
pentito
in January 2003, confessing to over 40 murders and his example would be
followed by many of his men.[35]
Two Aberdeen restaurateurs, Ciro Schiattarella and Michele Siciliano
were extradited to Italy for their part in the "Aberdeen Camorra".
A fourth Scottish associate named Brandon Queen who made history by
becoming the first foreign member of the Camorra is currently serving a
jail sentence in the UK.[citation
needed] It has been reported that he also receives
a monthly salary, legal assistance and protection, something only
members of the Clans receive.[citation
needed] Neapolitan writer and expert on the
Camorra,
Roberto Saviano, states that the Camorra has created a branch in
Aberdeen and that it is the focus of the La Torre clan's British
operations.[36][37]
Saviano alleges that from the 1980s, Italian gangsters ran a network
of lucrative businesses in the city as well as many illegal rackets.
Saviano said Scotland's third city, with no history of organized crime,
was seen as an attractive safe haven away from the violent inter-gang
bloodletting that had engulfed their Neapolitan stronghold of
Mondragone. Saviano claims that before the Italian clans arrived,
Aberdeen didn't know how to exploit its resources for recreation and
tourism. He further states that the Italians infused the city with
economic energy, revitalised the tourist industry, inspired new
import-export activities and injected new vigour in the real-estate
sector. It thereby turned Aberdeen into a chic, elegant address for fine
dining and important dealings.[37]
The hub of La Torre's UK empire, Pavarotti's restaurant, now under
different ownership, was even feted at Italissima, a prestigious
gastronomic fair held in Paris. The restaurant was even advertised on
the city's local tourist guides. Saviano further claims to have gone to
Aberdeen and worked in a restaurant run by Antonio La Torre. The
Camorristas operated a system known as "scratch" where they used
to step up illegal activities if their legitimate ventures were
struggling. If cash was short they had counterfeit notes printed; if
capital was needed in a hurry, they sold bogus treasury bonds. They
annihilated the competition through extortions and imported merchandise
tax-free. The Camorra were able to run all sort of deals because the
local police had virtually no experience in dealing with organized
crime. Although they broke the law, there were never any guns or serious
violence, due to lack of rivals.[37]
However, the suggestion that the city remains in the grip of mobsters
has been strongly denied by leaders of the 300 strong Italian community
in Aberdeen. Moreover, Giuseppe Baldini, the Italian government's
vice-consul in Aberdeen denies that the Camorra still maintains its
presence in Aberdeen.[37]
In popular culture