The Mafia used to be strictly a business of Italy’s south, but today organized crime has reached the north – Italy’s economic engine – and is thriving, investing its illegally-made millions there.
But unlike in the south, where the Mafia has a thorough and sometimes violent control over society, its influence in northern regions is mainly economic and often hidden.
“When they show up here, they look clean,” says Enrico Bini, the president of the town of Reggio Emilia’s Chamber of Commerce and one of the first and most outspoken public critics of organized crime in Emilia-Romagna. “It’s tricky. Companies sometimes don’t know whom they are making deals with.”
csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2012/0223/Italy-s-Mafia-troubles-creep-north
But, the claim is made, that sometimes suspicions are simply ignored.