Mafia

Today the 'Ndrangheta, originating in the southern Italian region of Calabria, is widely considered the richest and most powerful Mafia in the world.

[2][3] The 'Ndrangheta has been around for as long as the better-known Sicilian Cosa Nostra, but was only recently designated as a Mafia-type association in 2010, under Article 416 bis of the Italian penal code.

In reference to a man, mafiusu (mafioso in Italian) in 19th century Sicily signified 'fearless', 'enterprising', and 'proud', according to scholar Diego Gambetta.

The play is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of umirtà (omertà or code of silence) and pizzu (a codeword for extortion money).

[20] The term Mafia was never officially used by Sicilian mafiosi, who prefer to refer to their organization as "Cosa Nostra".

For many businessmen in Sicily, they provide an essential service when they cannot rely on the police and judiciary to enforce their contracts and protect their properties from thieves (this is often because they are engaged in black market deals).

[22] The [Sicilian] Mafia's principal activities are settling disputes among other criminals, protecting them against each other's cheating, and organizing and overseeing illicit agreements, often involving many agents, such as illicit cartel agreements in otherwise legal industries.Scholars have observed that many other societies around the world have criminal organizations of their own that provide the same sort of protection service.

With the [Russian] state in collapse and the security forces overwhelmed and unable to police contract law, ... cooperating with the criminal culture was the only option.

Introduced by Pio La Torre, article 416-bis of the Italian Penal Code defines a Mafia-type association (Italian: associazione di tipo mafioso) as one where "those belonging to the association exploit the potential for intimidation which their membership gives them, and the compliance and omertà which membership entails and which lead to the committing of crimes, the direct or indirect assumption of management or control of financial activities, concessions, permissions, enterprises and public services for the purpose of deriving profit or wrongful advantages for themselves or others".