Mafia infiltration in legitimate companies in Italy

Infiltration by mafias in the legitimate economy has been widely acknowledged by public and private institutions as a key threat to the Italian social, economic and political system. ¹ 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 (see Florio, Bosco ampentity D’amore, 2014 for a review). The Italian asset recovery regime has proved to be a powerful instrument with which to interrupt the mafia business cycle, and it has become an international model to combat the infiltration of the legitimate economy by organised crime (European Commission, 2012; Forsaith, Irving, Nanopoulos ampentity Fazekas, 2012).