Organized crime finds opportunity in a recession

“The mobster said ‘Yeah, no problem.’ Twenty four hours later, he met the man in an apartment building. He went away and came back with a black plastic bin liner full of 50,000 euros and said: Here’s your money. 4.5 percent interest. A month.” ?Duncan Kennedy on organized crime in Italy

According to the Italian shopkeepers’ association, the economic downturn is certainly a problem in Italy. The organization says that Mafia clans are increasingly preying on businesses that need money and can’t get loans from banks – it says around 180,000 firms have already been forced to get the cash they need form organized crime groups. A lot of these businesses are small family run affairs, who find it difficult to get loans at the best of times – and in the current crisis nigh on impossible. BBC Correspondent Duncan Kennedy in Rome has been following this story.