“THE SYSTEM

The huge international clothing market, the vast archipelago of Italian elegance, is fed by the System. With its companies, men, and products, the System has reached every corner of the globe. System—a term everyone here understands, but that still needs decoding elsewhere, an obscure reference for anyone unfamiliar with the power dynamics of the criminal economy. Camorra is a nonexistent word, a term of contempt used by narcs and judges, journalists and scriptwriters; it’s a generic indication, a scholarly term, relegated to history—a name that makes “Camorristi smile. The word clan members use is System—”I belong to the Secondigliano System”—an eloquent term, a mechanism rather than a structure. The criminal organization coincides directly with the economy, and the dialectic of commerce is the framework of the clans.



The Secondigliano System has gained control of the entire clothing manufacturing chain, and the real production zone and business center is the outskirts of Naples. Everything that is impossible to do elsewhere because of the inflexibility of contracts, laws, and copyrights is feasible here, just north of the city. Structured around the entrepreneurial power of the clans, the area produces astronomical capital, amounts unimaginable for any legal industrial conglomeration. The interrelated “textile, leatherworking, and shoe manufacturing activities set up by the clans produce garments and accessories identical to those of the principal Italian fashion houses.



The workforce in clan operations is highly skilled, with decades of experience under Italy’s and Europe’s most important designers. The same hands that once worked under the table for the big labels now work for the clans. Not only is the workmanship perfect, but the materials are exactly the same, either bought directly on the Chinese market or sent by the designer labels to the underground factories participating in the auctions. Which means that the clothes made by the clans aren’t the typical counterfeit goods, cheap imitations, or copies passed off as the real thing, but rather a sort of true fake. All that’s missing is the final step: the brand name, the official authorization of the motherhouse.


But the clans usurp that authorization without bothering to ask anybody’s permission. Besides, what clients anywhere in the world are really interested in is quality and design. And the clans provide just that—brand as well as quality—so there really is no difference. The Secondigliano clans have acquired entire retail chains, thus spreading their commercial network across the globe and dominating the international clothing market.


They also provide distribution to outlet stores. Products of slightly inferior quality have yet another venue: African street vendors and market stalls. Nothing goes unused. From factory to store, from retailer to distributor, hundreds “of companies and thousands of employees are elbowing each other to get in on the garment business run by the Secondigliano clans.



Everything is coordinated and managed by the Directory. I hear the term constantly—every time bar talk turns to business, or in the usual complaints about not having work: “It’s the Directory that wanted it that way.” “The Directory better get busy and start doing things on a bigger scale.” They sound like snippets of conversation in postrevolutionary France, when the collective governing body was Napoléon’s Directoire. “Directory” is the name the magistrates at the Naples DDA—the District Anti-Mafia Directorate—gave to the economic, financial, and operative structure of a group of businessmen “and Camorra family bosses in north Naples. A structure with a purely economic role. The Directory, and not the hit men or firing squads, represents the organization’s real power.



The clans affiliated with the Secondigliano Alliance—the Licciardi, Contini, Mallardo, Lo Russo, Bocchetti, Stabile, Prestieri, and Bosti families, as well as the more autonomous Sarno and Di Lauro families—make up the Directory, whose territory includes Secondigliano, Scampia, Piscinola, Chiaiano, Miano, San Pietro a Patierno, as well as Giugliano and Ponticelli. As the Directory’s federal structure offered greater autonomy to the clans, the more organic structure of the Alliance ultimately crumbled. The Directory’s production board included businessmen, “from Casoria, Arzano, and Melito, who ran companies such as Valent, Vip Moda, Vocos, and Vitec, makers of imitation Valentino, Ferré, Versace, and Armani sold all over the world. A 2004 inquiry, coordinated by Naples DDA prosecutor Filippo Beatrice, uncovered the Camorra’s vast economic empire. It all started with a small detail, one of those little things that could have passed unnoticed: a clothing store in Chemnitz, Germany, hired a Secondigliano boss. A rather unusual choice.

It turned out he actually owned the store, which was registered under a false name. From this lead, followed by wiretaps and state witnesses, the Naples DDA reconstructed each link in the Secondigliano clans’ production and commercial chain.


They set up shop everywhere. In Germany “they had stores and warehouses in Hamburg, Dortmund, and Frankfurt, and in Berlin there were two Laudano shops. In Spain they were in Barcelona and Madrid; in Brussels; in Vienna; and in Portugal in Oporto and Boavista. They had a jacket shop in London and stores in Dublin, Amsterdam, Finland, Denmark, Sarajevo, and Belgrade.

The Secondigliano clans also crossed the Atlantic, investing in Canada, the United States, even in South America. The American network was immense; millions of jeans were sold in shops in New York, Miami Beach, New Jersey, and Chicago, and they virtually monopolized the market in Florida.

American retailers and shopping-center owners wanted to deal exclusively with Secondigliano brokers; haute couture garments from big-name designers at at rea“reasonable prices meant that crowds of customers would flock to their shopping centers and malls.

The names on the labels were perfect. A matrix for printing Versace’s signature Medusa’s head was found in a lab on the outskirts of Naples. In Secondigliano word spread that the American market was dominated by Directory clothes, making it easier for young people eager to go to America and become salespeople. They were inspired by the success of Vip Moda, whose jeans filled Texas stores, where they were passed off as Valentino.



Business spread to the southern hemisphere as well. A boutique in Five Dock, New South Wales, became one of Australia’s hottest addresses for elegant clothing, and there were also shops and “warehouses in Sydney. The Secondigliano clans dominated the clothing market in Brazil—in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. They had plans to open a store for American and European tourists in Cuba, and they’d been investing in Saudi Arabia and North Africa for a while.


The distribution mechanism the Directory had put in place was based on warehouses—that’s how they’re referred to in the wiretappings—veritable clearing stations for people and merchandise, depots for every kind of clothing. The warehouses were the center of a commercial hub, the place where agents picked up the merchandise to be distributed to the clans’ stores or other retailers. It was an old concept, that of the magliari, the Neapolitan traveling salesmen; after the Second World War they invaded half the planet, eating up the “miles lugging their bags stuffed with socks, shirts, and jackets. Applying their age-old mercantile experience on a larger scale, the magliari became full-fledged commercial agents who could sell anywhere and everywhere, from neighborhood markets to malls, from parking lots to gas stations.

The best of them made a qualitative leap, selling large lots of clothing directly to retailers. According to investigations, some businessmen organized the distribution of fakes, offering logistical support to the sales reps, the magliari. They paid travel and hotel expenses in advance, provided vans and cars, and guaranteed legal assistance in the case of arrest or confiscation of merchandise. And of course they pocketed the earnings. A business with an annual turnover of about 300 million euros per family.



“The Italian labels started to protest against the Secondigliano cartels’ huge fake market only after the DDA uncovered the entire operation. Before that, they had no plans for a negative publicity campaign, never filed charges, or divulged to the press the harmful workings of the illegal production.

It is difficult to comprehend why the brands never took a stand against the clans, but there are probably many reasons. Denouncing them would have meant forgoing once and for all their cheap labor sources in Campania and Puglia. The clans would have closed down access to the clothing factories around Naples and hindered relations with those in Eastern Europe and Asia.

And given the vast number of shopping “centers operated directly by the clans, denouncing them would have jeopardized thousands of retail sales contacts. In many places the families handle transportation and agents, so fingering them would have meant a sudden rise in distribution costs.

Besides, the clans weren’t ruining the brands’ image, but simply taking advantage of their advertising and symbolic charisma. The garments they turned out were not inferior and didn’t disgrace the brands’ quality or design image. Not only did the clans not create any symbolic competition with the designer labels, they actually helped promote products whose market price made them prohibitive to the general public.

In short, the clans were promoting the brand. If hardly anyone wears a label’s clothes, if they’re seen only on live mannequins “on the runway, the market slowly dies and the prestige of the name declines. What’s more, the Neapolitan factories produced counterfeit garments in sizes that the designer labels, for the sake of their image, do not make. But the clans certainly weren’t going to trouble themselves about image when there was a profit to be made.

Through the true fake business and income from drug trafficking, the Secondigliano clans acquired stores and shopping centers where genuine articles were increasingly mixed in with the fakes, thus erasing any distinction. In a way the System sustained the legal fashion empire in a moment of crisis; by taking advantage of sharply rising prices, it continued to promote Italian-made goods throughout the world, earning exponential sums.”