MAFIA now Italy's largest commercial bank...

**Thorn777** · January 22, 2012, 01:11 PM

Link

The crisis in Europe hasn’t been terrible for everyone. Reuters reports that, according to one anti-crime group, the Mafia is now Italy’s largest “bank,” lending out some $179 billion each year, more than any other financial institution in the country:

Old style gangsters handing out cash in bars and pool halls had been replaced by apparently respectable bankers, lawyers or notaries, the report said. “This is extortion with a clean face,” it added. “Through their professions, they know the mechanisms of the legal credit market and they often know the financial position of their victims perfectly.”
Small businesses, who have struggled to get hold of credit during the economic slowdown, may have been increasingly tempted to turn to the mafia, said the report. Typical victims of extortionate lending were middle-aged shopkeepers and small businessmen who would struggle to find a new job and who were ready to try anything to avoid bankruptcy, it added.
The Reuters story says organized crime accounts for about 7 percent of Italy’s GDP. An earlier story from 2008 reported that the ’Ndrangheta, the country’s largest crime group, makes up a stunning 3 percent of the GDP all by itself.

On another euromess note, check out my Washington Post colleague Anthony Faiola’s dispatch today on the toll that austerity and a miserable economic performance have been taking in Greece.

I think the saddest thing is that we are not even amazed by such news anymore. You can even go "heck these mobloans get me better interest and a contract I can understand without a lawyer, so I'd be an idiot not to".

And I dont think its worrying the banks. Let the mob do that business for all they care, as long as they can play pong with their mates around the world.

When will we wake up and get srs again?

**mattgoby** · January 22, 2012, 01:24 PM

I find this interesting, as if they have reasonable interest rates, this is a good thing?

As the bank will never collapse due to you know being propped up by cocaine and prostitutes..

Of course they could just take all the money and run which i suppose is a worry.

**Oswald von Wolkenstein** · January 22, 2012, 03:07 PM

So they've switched to the U.S. System?

**Sarissofoi** · January 22, 2012, 03:14 PM

Simple.
In mafia incometency is punished.
In banks its rewarded.

**~~ToonTotalWar~~** · January 22, 2012, 06:22 PM

It's the same here in the UK, plenty of scumbags wanting to lend money with extortinate interest rates due to the lack of lending by banks and other financial Institutions.

All in all most of these lenders want collateral as a condition so they can repossess your belongings if you do not keep up with payments.

The whole of Europe is in a very sad state of affairs financially!

**Necromancer** · January 22, 2012, 06:57 PM

This is news?

**Condottiere 40K** · January 22, 2012, 08:25 PM

It's not surprising,considering that loan sharking seems to exist during booms as well as busts. Both seem somehow predatory, but banks can be restricted from physical violence in pursuit of payment.