Camorra

The Camorra is an Italian Mafia-type crime syndicate, or secret society, which arose in the region of Campania and its capital Naples. It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy, dating back to the 17th century. Unlike the pyramidal structure of the Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra's organizational structure is more horizontal than vertical. Consequently, individual Camorra clans act independently of each other, and are more prone to feuding among themselves.

Background

The origins of the Camorra are not entirely clear. It may date back to the 17th century as a direct Italian descendant of a Spanish secret society, the Garduña, founded in 1417. Officials of the Kingdom of Naples may have introduced the organisation to the area, or it may have grown gradually out of small criminal gangs operating in Neapolitan society near the end of the 18th century. However, recent historical research in Spain suggests that the Garduña never really existed and was based on a fictional 19th-century book.

Camorristi in Naples, 1906

The Camorra first emerged during the chaotic power vacuum in the years between 1799 and 1815, when the Parthenopean Republic was proclaimed on the wave of the French Revolution and the Bourbon Restoration. The first official mention of the Camorra as an organization 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 organization was also known as the Bella Società Riformata, Società dell'Umirtà or Onorata Società.

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 new police chief, Liborio Romano, turned to the head of the Camorra, Salvatore De Crescenzo, to maintain order and appointed him as head of the municipal guard. The Camorra effectively had developed into power brokers in a few decades. In 1869, Ciccio Cappuccio was elected as the capintesta (head-in-chief) of the Camorra by the twelve district heads (capintriti), succeeding De Crescenzo after a short interregnum. Nicknamed 'The king of Naples' ('‘o rre 'e Napole) he died in 1892.

Following Italian unification in 1861 attempts were made to tackle the Camorra and a series of manhunts were made from 1882 on. The Saredo Inquiry (1900–1901), established to investigate corruption and bad governance in Naples, identified a system of political patronage ran by what the report called the "high Camorra":

The original low camorra held sway over the poor plebs in an age of abjection and servitude. Then there arose a high camorra comprising the most cunning and audacious members of the middle class.

They fed off trade and public works contracts, political meetings and government bureaucracy. This high camorra strikes deals and does business with the low camorra, swapping promises for favours and favours for promises. The high camorra thinks of the state bureaucracy as being like a field it has to harvest and exploit. Its tools are cunning, nerve and violence. Its strength comes from the streets. And it is rightly considered to be more dangerous, because it has re-established the worst form of despotism by founding a regime based on bullying. The high camorra has replaced free will with impositions, it has nullified individuality and liberty, and it has defrauded the law and public trust.

The Inquiry introduced the terminology of "high Camorra", with a bourgeois character, but distinct from the plebeian Camorra proper, although both were in close contact through the figure of the intermediary (faccendiere).

From the rich industrialist who wants a clear road into politics or administration to the small shopowner who wants to ask for a reduction of taxes; from the businessman trying to win a contract to a worker looking for a job in a factory; from a professional who wants more clients or greater recognition to somebody looking for an office job; from somebody from the provinces who has come to Naples to buy some goods to somebody who wants to emigrate to America; they all find somebody stepping into their path, and nearly all made use of them.

However, whether the "high Camorra" was an integral part of the Camorra proper is disputed. Although the inquiry did not prove specific collusion between the Camorra and politics, it brought to light the patronage mechanisms that fueled corruption in the municipality. The society's influence was weakened which was exemplified by the defeat of all of their candidates in the 1901 Naples election. Many camorristi left for the United States in the early 20th century.

The Camorra received another blow with the Cuocolo trial (1911–1912). While the trial was about the murder of the Camorrista Gennaro Cuocolo and his wife, suspected of being police spies, on June 6, 1906, the main investigator, Carabinieri Captain Carlo Fabbroni, transformed it from a murder trial into one against the Camorra as a whole. Fabbroni intended to use the trial to strike the final blow to the Camorra. The trial attracted a lot of attention of newspapers and the general public both in Italy as well as in the United States, including by Pathé's Gazette. The hearings began in the spring of 1911 and would continue for twelve months. After a 17-month trial, the often tumultuous proceedings ended with a guilty verdict on July 8, 1912. The defendants, including 27 leading Camorra bosses, were sentenced to a total of 354 years' imprisonment. The main defendant and nominal head of the Camorra, Enrico Alfano, was sentenced to 30 years.

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.

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.

Activities

Compared to the Sicilian Mafia'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."

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 Naples.

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. 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.

In 2004 and 2005 the Di Lauro clan and the so-called Scissionisti di Secondigliano 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. Despite this, in the following year there were over 120 murders.

In 2001 the businessman Domenico Noviello from Caserta testified against a Camorra extortionist and subsequently received police protection. In 2008 he refused further protection and was killed one week later.

In recent years, various Camorra clans have been allegedly utilizing alliances with Nigerian drug gangs and the Albanian mafia. 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 in which the Camorra sanctioned stewardship 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 in sexual slavery before sending them across the whole of Europe.

Refuse crisis

Main articles: Naples waste management issue

Since the mid-1990s, the Camorra has taken over the handling of refuse 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.

The situation worsened during this period as the Camorra diversified their illegal waste disposal strategy: 1) transporting and dumping hazardous waste in the countryside by truck; 2) dumping waste in illegal caves or holes; 3) mixing toxic waste with textiles to avoid explosions and then burning it; and 4) mixing toxic with urban waste for disposal in landfills and incinerators.

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 uses child labour to drive the waste in for a small price, as they 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 proven very difficult for officials to combat.

In November 2013 a demonstration by tens of thousands of people was held in Naples in protest against the pollution caused by the Camorra's control of refuse disposal. Over a twenty-year period, it was alleged, about ten million tonnes of industrial waste had been illegally dumped, with cancers caused by pollution increasing by 40–47%.

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 recoursed 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."

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.

Unlike the Sicilian 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

Arrests

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. 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. In 2014, clan boss Mario Riccio was arrested for drug trafficking in the Naples area. Around the same time 29 suspected Camorra members were also arrested in Rome.

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.

In 2008, Italian police arrested three members of the Camorra crime syndicate on September 30, 2008. According to Gianfrancesco Siazzu, commander of the Carabinieri police, the three were captured in small villas on the coast of Naples. All three had been on Italy's 100 top most wanted list. Police seized assets valued at over 100 million euros and also weapons, including two AK-47 assault rifles that may have been used in the shooting of six Africans on September 18, 2008. Police found pistols, Carabinieri uniforms and other outfits that were used to disguise members of the operation. During the same week, a separate operation netted 26 additional suspects in Caserta. All were believed to belong to the powerful Camorra crime syndicate that operates in and around Naples. The suspects were charged with extortion and weapons possession. In some cases, the charges also included murder and robbery. Giuseppina Nappa, the 48-year-old wife of a jailed crime boss, was among those arrested. She is believed to be the Camorra's local paymaster.

In November 2018, Italian police announced the arrest of Antonio Orlando, suspected of being a major figure in the Camorra.

In February 2019, Ciro Rinaldi, boss of the Rinaldi clan, was arrested in a house in the region of San Pietro a Patierno, he is accused of the double murder of Raffaele Cepparulo and Ciro Colonna, an innocent victim. Rinaldi is also considered responsible for the murder of Vincenzo De Bernardo, a member of the Mazzarella clan, historically rivals of the Rinaldi clan. In the time of his arrest, his clan was considered one of the most powerful clans of the Camorra, having all the eastern area of the city of ​​Naples under their control and having as allies the powerful Secondigliano Alliance.

In March 2019, Marco Di Lauro, the second most wanted man in Italy, was arrested after spending 14 years on the run. He is the fourth son of ex-Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro. In 2010, an informant said that he was responsible for at least four murders.

In June 2019, the Italian police arrested more than 120 members of the Secondigliano Alliance, the alliance created by the Licciardi, Contini and Mallardo clans, in an anti-Camorra operation. The police also confiscated €130 million. Among those who were arrested were the wives of the bosses of the Bosti, Mallardo, Licciardi and Contini clans, but also their lieutenants, children, grandchildren and entrepreneurs who worked for the alliance. The historical female boss Maria Licciardi managed to escape from the arrest in the operation, and became a fugitive. 7 members of the organization were arrested in Spain, Netherlands, South America and in the Balkans, places where they were running illicit business on behalf of the Alliance.

• Since 26 June 2019, Maria Licciardi was considered the most wanted fugitive belonging to the Camorra, after she managed to escape the huge police operation against her clan. However, on 12 July 2019, the Court of Naples annulled the preventive detention against Licciardi, sharing the legal questions raised by her lawyer, Dario Vannetiello. Now, Licciardi is considered a free woman, despite her known role as the head of the Secondigliano Alliance.

On 4 July 2019, the Guardia di Finanza seized 538kg of cocaine, worth €200 million, destined for the Camorra in the port of Genoa. According to the reports, the drug was found in 19 bags inside a container that arrived from Colombia. On each of the loaves was a fake note of €500, the symbol is known to be of a new Colombian cartel born of the merger of several other cartels. The container was headed to Naples but was intercepted in the port of Genoa.

On 12 July 2019, the Italian police confiscated €300 million, including 600 houses, lands, 16 cars and bank accounts belonging to Antonio Passarelli, a businessman believed to be connected to the Di Lauro clan, Puca clan, Aversano clan, Mallardo clan, Verde clan, Perfetto clan and to the Scissionisti di Secondigliano.

Youth gangs

With most of the old Camorra clans decapitated, and their bosses either dead or arrested, the organization is experiencing a rise in youth criminal gangs trying to take their places. This phenomenon is called Paranza, which is Camorra terminology, for a criminal group led by youngsters or "small fish". In the past, the older bosses often operated out of the limelight, but the young criminals in modern times broadcast their exploits on social media, posing in designer clothes, and €200 bottles of champagne.

In 2014, Emanuele Sibillo was 18 and considered one of the first young and leading bosses of this new generation. In 2015, he was shot dead by a rival baby gang. Most of these young criminals are children of Camorra members that are currently in jail.

According to Felia Allum, author of book The Invisible Camorra: Neapolitan Crime Families across Europe:

We can clearly see the baby gangs are criminals, or people who want to have criminal careers. But there's a vacuum, because the traditional families have lost their leaders. In the centre of Naples the bosses are either in prison or they've become state witnesses, so there's this kind of space for younger kids to appear. They're 17 or 18 with criminal ambition, and they've got a sense of identity of what they want to do.

However, according to Peppe Misso, called ’o nasone, former boss of the Misso clan for over 40 years and now pentito, this young generation of criminals are managed by the "real" Camorra clans, shifting the public attention to these baby gangs while they do their business in silence. According to Misso, the real power of the organization is now in the hands of the Licciardi clan, Mallardo clan, Moccia clan and Contini clan.

Deaths

On 2 September 2018, Ciro Mazzarella, one of the last historical godfathers of the Camorra, and head of the Mazzarella clan, died in his villa in the affluent neighbourhood of Posillipo, Naples at the age of 78.

On 23 April 2019, the powerful boss Mario Fabbrocino, leader of the Fabbrocino clan, died in the hospital of the Parma prison, where he was serving a life sentence for ordering the murder of Roberto Cutolo, Raffaele Cutolo's only son, in 1990. He was known as the boss dei due mondi (boss of two worlds) due to his drug trafficking connections in South America.

On 11 July 2019, Anna Terracciano, known as ‘a Masculona, boss of the Terracciano clan, died after suffering from an unknown illness. Terraciano had taken control of the clan after the death of her brother Salvatore, known as ‘o Nirone, in 2016. She has always been very feared and respected for her impetuous nature. According to the media, she is the figure that has well represented the image of the women inside the Camorra, the female symbol of leadership when men are detained or dead.

Current status

According to reports, in 2019, after the arrest of Marco Di Lauro, leader of the Di Lauro clan and fourth son of Paolo Di Lauro, the Contini clan became the most powerful clan of the Camorra, thanks to no internal split, and no having affiliates that became collaborators of justice. The clan is present in the drugs trafficking, extortion, betting and counterfeiting, also investing hundreds of millions of euros in various countries of Europe.

According to the reports of the DIA about the Camorra, the Mazzarella clan, despite the bloody war against the Rinaldi clan, is still one of most powerful organizations in Campania, dominating the territory in various neighbourhoods, and having numerous groups under their influence, as the Ferraiuolo clan.

After a time inactive, the De Luca Bossa clan is believed to be gaining power again in the eastern area of ​​Naples, specifically in Ponticelli, thanks to the merger with emergent groups as the Minichini and Schisa.