Naples is a nice place to visit if you don't have to smell it. There is a lot of old (and new) rubbish in the southern Italian state of Campania of which Naples is the capital. And it stinks, both literally and in terms of organised crime.
Apart from the increasing piles of refuse, a feature of the city is the Camorra, one of the most powerful of the five principal Mafia groups in Italy.
The two problems are linked. (The garbage problem has been going on for over 14 years. The Camorra much longer). The connection is that the Camorra make a perfumed profit from the business of disposing waste in illegal dumps. (Regardless of what the republican police attempt to prevent the rottenness ).
This is only an adjunct to the global activity of the Camorra. They provide loans at exorbitant rates to sweatshops that provide many of the the lucrative garments Italy sells abroad.
The import of arms from eastern Europe is also an earner. Associates launder money through businesses from Taiwan to Brno, from Miami Beach to New South Wales and back again. (Call it globalisation.)
Their open-air drug market in Segondigliano in Campania is a side show in terms of revenue.
The group would be worth hundreds of millions of euros if it were listed on the Milan stock exchange.
It is not just the hapless government of prime minister Romano Prodi in Rome that is upset. It is the remaining, aged, godfathers of Sicily who are witness to, and envious of, such an impressive performance.
