Turin is North West, and it’s traditionally Southern-controlled, organized crime-wise.

Despite the stereotype the North of Italy had plenty of poverty well into the 1960s. That’s why some of the first immigrants to reach the New World as well as Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, were from the North. The Veneto region in the north east along with Friuli-Venezia-Giulia were two of the poorest areas in all of Italy well into the 1960s.

They always had some low brow underworld but what powered them up were a specific number of southern mafiosi who were sent (“exiled”) to the region in the 1960s-1970s. They groomed some local hoodlums into straight up mobsters.

It’s worth to say that, similarly to the American Mob, every few years you have these big takedowns and the media and the law shout how they managed to “eradicate” the “new” Mala. Although they won’t reach the level of influence and power they held between the 1970s and the early 1990s, they regularly demonstrate their ability to re-organize and create alliances with other groups, from the Neapolitans to the Albanians.

Presently they are a loosely associated network of racketeers, drug dealers, robbers and loan sharks.

Some higher level guys among the arrested were former “lieutenants” in the original power structure. They had enough pull to touch bases with Southern mobsters based in Brescia to organize the assassination of rat boss Felice Maniero. The attempt was foiled when Maniero was arrested and put on trial for domestic violence, (for which he was convicted in October 2021), and sentenced to four years.