Camorra
The Camorra is an Italian Mafia-type criminal organization, or secret society. It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy, dating to the 17th century. Its main businesses are drug trafficking, racketeering, counterfeiting and money laundering. It has acquired a strong presence in other European countries, particularly Spain.
About Camorra in brief
The Camorra is an Italian Mafia-type criminal organization, or secret society. It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy, dating to the 17th century. Its main businesses are drug trafficking, racketeering, counterfeiting and money laundering. Since the early 1980s and its involvement in the drug trafficking business, it has acquired a strong presence in other European countries, particularly Spain. Unlike the pyramidal structure of the Sicilian Mafia, theCamorra’s organizational structure is divided into individual groups also called ‘clans’ The original low camorra held sway over the poor plebs in Neapolitan society. They fed the most cunning and audacious members of the middle class. The Saredo Inquiry identified a system of political patronage run by what the report called the ‘high camorras’. The report identified a series of manhunts to investigate corruption and bad governance in Naples, including the arrest of the head of the city’s municipal guard, Salvatore De Crescenzo, in 1861. In 1869 he was elected as the capintesta of the CamorRA, succeeding De Cappenzo after a short internum. In 1861 he died in 1861, the king of Naples made attempts to suppress the Cam orra. Then there arose a high age of abjection and servitude in Naples. The first official use of the word ‘camorra’ as a word dates from 1735, when a royal decree authorised the establishment of eight gambling houses.
The word is likely a blend, or portmanteau, of ‘capo’ and ‘morra,’ which is a word for a street game in the city. It may date to the17th century as a direct Italian descendant of a Spanish secret society, the Garduña, founded in 1417. The evolution into more organised formations indicated a qualitative change. The liberals realised that they needed popular support to overthrow the king and paid them because the camorristi were the leaders of theCity of Naples. In a few decades, the CamOrra had developed into power brokers. The most powerful groups in the present day are the Mazzarella clan and the Secondigliano Alliance. The latter is an alliance of the Licciardi, Contini and Mallardo clans. Usually Camorras maintain close contacts with South American drug cartels, which facilitates the arrival of drugs in Europe, particularly in Spain and the UK. The Camorras have been involved in drug trafficking since at least the 1970s and 1980s, and are now involved in racketeering and counterfeiting as well as money laundering, among other activities. They have been linked to the murder of several high-profile politicians and businessmen. The group has also been implicated in the assassination of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 1998. It has been accused of being responsible for the death of former President Giorgio Napolitano in 2000.
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This page is based on the article Camorra published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
