Italy's mafia abandoning rivalries to join forces, report says

ROME (Reuters) -Italy's mafia is turning away from violent turf wars to collaborate in drug trafficking, prostitution rings and money laundering, the national anti-mafia agency (DIA) said in an annual report about the organized crime groups on Tuesday.

Sicily's Cosa Nostra and the Camorra around Naples are forming alliances at home and abroad, while the 'Ndrangheta, based in Calabria in Italy's southern toe, is increasingly focused on controlling public works projects, the report said.

"Coexistence has fostered synergies that have progressively become structured," DIA director Michele Carbone told a press conference. These structures had become "capable of absorbing overlaps, tensions and frictions," he added.

Public works linked to Italy's EU-backed post-COVID Recovery Fund, plans for a huge bridge connecting Sicily to the mainland, and preparations for the 2026 Winter Olympics were all in danger of mafia infiltration, the DIA report said.

The construction sector represented 38% of administrative anti-mafia measures in 2024, with investigations into 200 building sites for public projects. Carbone said the DIA was ready to block any mafia involvement in the bridge to Sicily.

"Soon all anti-mafia prevention activities in connection with the construction of the bridge over the Strait (of Messina) will be started," he said.

The DIA also highlighted the mafia's growing technological expertise, using encrypted communication channels and maintaining contacts with prison inmates through drones.

Chinese "underground banking" networks are increasingly being used for money laundering, it said.

At the same time, the recruitment of marginalised young people to commit crimes in what are called "baby gangs" is facilitated by spectacular displays of power on social media, the report said.

(Reporting by Enrico Sciacovelli, editing by Gavin Jones and Rod Nickel)