Mafia infiltration in legitimate companies in Italy: From traditional sectors to emerging businesses

Infiltration by mafias of the legitimate economy has been widely acknowledged by public and private institutions as a key threat to the Italian social, economic and political system. Since the 1980s a wide range of measures – at investigative, administrative and judicial levels – have been introduced to tackle this phenomenon; in particular, to improve the tracing and confiscation of the businesses controlled by organised crime. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the infiltration of organised crime groups in Italian firms, first, by focusing on the territories, sectors, modi operandi of infiltration by Italian mafias; second, by analysing the poor information concerning the infiltration by foreign organised crime groups, Chinese criminal organisations in particular.