The emergence of strategic partnerships is not simply the outcome of criminal minds at
work, but owes much to the profound economic and geo-political changes which have taken
place over the last decade. Even more efficiently than legal operators, organized crime groups
have been quick to take advantage of new opportunities: they have exploited the
internationalization of legal, commercial and financial markets, the relaxation of international
boundaries, scientific and technological advances - particularly in the field of
telecommunications - and new geo-political configurations around the world. Taken together,
these elements have encouraged the internationalization and progressive integration of
criminal markets in goods and services, which now appear regulated by consent, rather than
by violent power struggles, into sectoral and geographical areas of competence. This has
occurred at national level in Italy, where instead of competing for the same markets, a kind of
‘syndication’ of the four major organized crime groups - Cosa Nostra, the Camorra (from the
Naples area), the ‘Ndrangheta’ (Calabria) and the United Holy Crown (Apulia) - has taken
place. Where once these groups fought for market shares, nowadays when they operate
outside their home regions they divide up territory and activities without undue conflict, while
services such as money laundering tend to be centralized in the hands of professional
outsiders. The same pattern has developed at international level, as will be seen below.