Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System

THE SYSTEM

The huge international clothing market, the vast archipelago of Italian elegance, is fed by the System. With its companies, men, and products, the System has reached every corner of the globe. System—a term everyone here understands, but that still needs decoding elsewhere, an obscure reference for anyone unfamiliar with the power dynamics of the criminal economy. Camorra is a nonexistent word, a term of contempt used by narcs and judges, journalists and scriptwriters; it’s a generic indication, a scholarly term, relegated to history—a name that makes Camorristi smile. The word clan members use is System—”I belong to the Secondigliano System”—an eloquent term, a mechanism rather than a structure. The criminal organization coincides directly with the economy, and the dialectic of commerce is the framework of the clans.

The Secondigliano System has gained control of the entire clothing manufacturing chain, and the real production zone and business center is the outskirts of Naples. Everything that is impossible to do elsewhere because of the inflexibility of contracts, laws, and copyrights is feasible here, just north of the city. Structured around the entrepreneurial power of the clans, the area produces astronomical capital, amounts unimaginable for any legal industrial conglomeration. The interrelated textile, leatherworking, and shoe manufacturing activities set up by the clans produce garments and accessories identical to those of the principal Italian fashion houses.

The workforce in clan operations is highly skilled, with decades of experience under Italy’s and Europe’s most important designers. The same hands that once worked under the table for the big labels now work for the clans. Not only is the workmanship perfect, but the materials are exactly the same, either bought directly on the Chinese market or sent by the designer labels to the underground factories participating in the auctions. Which means that the clothes made by the clans aren’t the typical counterfeit goods, cheap imitations, or copies passed off as the real thing, but rather a sort of true fake. All that’s missing is the final step: the brand name, the official authorization of the motherhouse. But the clans usurp that authorization without bothering to ask anybody’s permission. Besides, what clients anywhere in the world are really interested in is quality and design. And the clans provide just that—brand as well as quality—so there really is no difference. The Secondigliano clans have acquired entire retail chains, thus spreading their commercial network across the globe and dominating the international clothing market. They also provide distribution to outlet stores. Products of slightly inferior quality have yet another venue: African street vendors and market stalls. Nothing goes unused. From factory to store, from retailer to distributor, hundreds of companies and thousands of employees are elbowing each other to get in on the garment business run by the Secondigliano clans.

Everything is coordinated and managed by the Directory. I hear the term constantly—every time bar talk turns to business, or in the usual complaints about not having work: “It’s the Directory that wanted it that way.” “The Directory better get busy and start doing things on a bigger scale.” They sound like snippets of conversation in postrevolutionary France, when the collective governing body was Napoléon’s Directoire. “Directory” is the name the magistrates at the Naples DDA—the District Anti-Mafia Directorate—gave to the economic, financial, and operative structure of a group of businessmen and Camorra family bosses in north Naples. A structure with a purely economic role. The Directory, and not the hit men or firing squads, represents the organization’s real power.

The clans affiliated with the Secondigliano Alliance—the Licciardi, Contini, Mallardo, Lo Russo, Bocchetti, Stabile, Prestieri, and Bosti families, as well as the more autonomous Sarno and Di Lauro families—make up the Directory, whose territory includes Secondigliano, Scampia, Piscinola, Chiaiano, Miano, San Pietro a Patierno, as well as Giugliano and Ponticelli. As the Directory’s federal structure offered greater autonomy to the clans, the more organic structure of the Alliance ultimately crumbled. The Directory’s production board included businessmen from Casoria, Arzano, and Melito, who ran companies such as Valent, Vip Moda, Vocos, and Vitec, makers of imitation Valentino, Ferré, Versace, and Armani sold all over the world. A 2004 inquiry, coordinated by Naples DDA prosecutor Filippo Beatrice, uncovered the Camorra’s vast economic empire. It all started with a small detail, one of those little things that could have passed unnoticed: a clothing store in Chemnitz, Germany, hired a Secondigliano boss. A rather unusual choice. It turned out he actually owned the store, which was registered under a false name. From this lead, followed by wiretaps and state witnesses, the Naples DDA reconstructed each link in the Secondigliano clans’ production and commercial chain.

They set up shop everywhere. In Germany they had stores and warehouses in Hamburg, Dortmund, and Frankfurt, and in Berlin there were two Laudano shops. In Spain they were in Barcelona and Madrid; in Brussels; in Vienna; and in Portugal in Oporto and Boavista. They had a jacket shop in London and stores in Dublin, Amsterdam, Finland, Denmark, Sarajevo, and Belgrade. The Secondigliano clans also crossed the Atlantic, investing in Canada, the United States, even in South America. The American network was immense; millions of jeans were sold in shops in New York, Miami Beach, New Jersey, and Chicago, and they virtually monopolized the market in Florida. American retailers and shopping-center owners wanted to deal exclusively with Secondigliano brokers; haute couture garments from big-name designers at reasonable prices meant that crowds of customers would flock to their shopping centers and malls. The names on the labels were perfect.

A matrix for printing Versace’s signature Medusa’s head was found in a lab on the outskirts of Naples. In Secondigliano word spread that the American market was dominated by Directory clothes, making it easier for young people eager to go to America and become salespeople. They were inspired by the success of Vip Moda, whose jeans filled Texas stores, where they were passed off as Valentino.

Business spread to the southern hemisphere as well. A boutique in Five Dock, New South Wales, became one of Australia’s hottest addresses for elegant clothing, and there were also shops and warehouses in Sydney. The Secondigliano clans dominated the clothing market in Brazil—in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. They had plans to open a store for American and European tourists in Cuba, and they’d been investing in Saudi Arabia and North Africa for a while. The distribution mechanism the Directory had put in place was based on warehouses—that’s how they’re referred to in the wiretappings—veritable clearing stations for people and merchandise, depots for every kind of clothing. The warehouses were the center of a commercial hub, the place where agents picked up the merchandise to be distributed to the clans’ stores or other retailers. It was an old concept, that of the magliari, the Neapolitan traveling salesmen; after the Second World War they invaded half the planet, eating up the miles lugging their bags stuffed with socks, shirts, and jackets. Applying their age-old mercantile experience on a larger scale, the magliari became full-fledged commercial agents who could sell anywhere and everywhere, from neighborhood markets to malls, from parking lots to gas stations. The best of them made a qualitative leap, selling large lots of clothing directly to retailers. According to investigations, some businessmen organized the distribution of fakes, offering logistical support to the sales reps, the magliari. They paid travel and hotel expenses in advance, provided vans and cars, and guaranteed legal assistance in the case of arrest or confiscation of merchandise. And of course they pocketed the earnings. A business with an annual turnover of about 300 million euros per family.

The Italian labels started to protest against the Secondigliano cartels’ huge fake market only after the DDA uncovered the entire operation. Before that, they had no plans for a negative publicity campaign, never filed charges, or divulged to the press the harmful workings of the illegal production. It is difficult to comprehend why the brands never took a stand against the clans, but there are probably many reasons. Denouncing them would have meant forgoing once and for all their cheap labor sources in Campania and Puglia. The clans would have closed down access to the clothing factories around Naples and hindered relations with those in Eastern Europe and Asia. And given the vast number of shopping centers operated directly by the clans, denouncing them would have jeopardized thousands of retail sales contacts. In many places the families handle transportation and agents, so fingering them would have meant a sudden rise in distribution costs. Besides, the clans weren’t ruining the brands’ image, but simply taking advantage of their advertising and symbolic charisma. The garments they turned out were not inferior and didn’t disgrace the brands’ quality or design image. Not only did the clans not create any symbolic competition with the designer labels, they actually helped promote products whose market price made them prohibitive to the general public. In short, the clans were promoting the brand. If hardly anyone wears a label’s clothes, if they’re seen only on live mannequins on the runway, the market slowly dies and the prestige of the name declines. What’s more, the Neapolitan factories produced counterfeit garments in sizes that the designer labels, for the sake of their image, do not make. But the clans certainly weren’t going to trouble themselves about image when there was a profit to be made. Through the true fake business and income from drug trafficking, the Secondigliano clans acquired stores and shopping centers where genuine articles were increasingly mixed in with the fakes, thus erasing any distinction. In a way the System sustained the legal fashion empire in a moment of crisis; by taking advantage of sharply rising prices, it continued to promote Italian-made goods throughout the world, earning exponential sums.

The Secondigliano clans realized that their vast international distribution and sales network was their greatest asset, even stronger than drug trafficking. Narcotics and clothing often moved along the same routes. The System’s entrepreneurial energies were also invested in technology, however. Investigations in 2004 revealed that the clans use their commercial networks to import Chinese high-tech products for European distribution. Europe had the form—the brand, the fame, and the advertising—and China the content—the actual product, cheap labor, and inexpensive materials. The System brought the two together, winning out all around. Aware that the economy was on the brink, the clans targeted Chinese industrial zones already manufacturing for big Western companies; in this they followed the pattern of businesses that first invested in southern Italy’s urban sprawl and then gradually shifted to China. They got the idea of ordering batches of high-tech products to resell on the European market, obviously with a fake brand name that would increase desirability. But they were cautious; as with a batch of cocaine, they first tested the quality of the products the Chinese factories sold them. After confirming their market validity, they launched one of the most prosperous intercontinental dealings in criminal history. Digital cameras, video cameras, and power tools: drills, grinders, pneumatic hammers, planes, and sanders, all marketed as Bosch, Hammer, or Hilti. When the Secondigliano boss Paolo Di Lauro started doing business with China, he was ten years ahead of the initiative of Confindustria, the Italian Manufacturers’ Association, to improve business ties with Asia. The Di Lauro clan sold thousands of Canons and Hitachis on the East European market. Thanks to Camorra imports, items that were once the prerogative of the upper-middle class were now accessible to a broader public. To guarantee a stronger entry into the market, the clans offered practically the identical product, slapping the brand name on at the end.

The Di Lauro and Contini clans’ investment in China, which was the focus of a 2004 Naples DDA inquiry, demonstrates the entrepreneurial farsightedness of the bosses. The era of big business was finished and the criminal conglomerates had crumbled as a result. The Nuova Camorra Organizzata or New Organized Camorra, established by Raffaele Cutolo in the 1980s, had been a sort of enormous company, a centralized conglomerate. It was followed by La Nuova Famiglia or New Family, which Carmine Alfieri and Antonio Bardellino operated as a federal structure of economically autonomous families united by common interests. But this too proved unwieldy.

The flexibility of today’s economy has permitted small groups of manager bosses operating in hundreds of enterprises in well-defined sectors to control the social and financial arenas. There is now a horizontal structure—much more flexible than Cosa Nostra, and much more permeable to new alliances than the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta—that draws constantly on new clans, and adopts new strategies in entering cutting-edge markets. Dozens of police operations in recent years have revealed that both the Sicilian Mafia and the ‘Ndrangheta needed to go through the Neapolitan clans to purchase big drug lots. The Naples and Campania cartels were supplying cocaine and heroin at good prices, so buying from them often proved easier and more economical than buying directly from South American and Albanian dealers.

The restructuring of the clans notwithstanding, the Camorra is the most solid criminal organization in Europe in terms of membership. For every Sicilian Mafioso there are five Camorristi, eight for every ‘Ndranghetista. Three to four times as many members as the other organizations. The constant spotlight on Cosa Nostra and the obsessive attention to Mafia bombs have provided the perfect media distraction for the Camorra, which has remained practically unknown. With the post-Fordist restructuring, the Naples clans have stopped giving handouts to the masses, and the rise in petty crime in the city can be explained by this curtailing of stipends. Camorra groups no longer need to maintain widespread military-style control—or at least not always—because their principal business activities now take place outside Naples.

Investigations conducted by the Naples anti-Mafia prosecutor reveal that the Camorra’s flexible, federalist structure has completely transformed the fabric of the families: instead of diplomatic alliances and stable pacts, clans now operate more like business committees. The Camorra’s flexibility reflects its need to move capital, set up and liquidate companies, circulate money, and invest quickly in real estate without geographical restrictions or heavy dependence on political mediation. The clans no longer need to organize in large bodies. These days a group of people can decide to band together, rob, smash store windows, and steal without risking being killed or taken over by the clan. The gangs rampaging around Naples are not composed exclusively of individuals who commit crimes to pad their wallets, buy fancy cars, or live in luxury. They know that by joining forces and increasing the degree and amount of violence, they can often improve their economic capacity, becoming interlocutors for the clans. The Camorra is made up of groups that suck like voracious lice, hindering all economic development, and others that operate as instant innovators, pushing their businesses to new heights of development and trade. Caught between these two opposing yet complementary movements, the skin of the city is lacerated and torn. In Naples cruelty is the most complex and affordable strategy for becoming a successful businessman. The air of the city smells like war, you can breathe it through every pore; it has the rancid odor of sweat, and the streets have become open-air gyms for training to ransack, plunder, and steal, for exercising the gymnastics of power, and the spinning of economic growth.

In the urban outskirts the System has expanded, rising like bread dough. Local and regional governments thought they could oppose the System by not doing business with the clans. But that wasn’t enough. They underrated the power of the families and neglected the phenomenon, considering it an aspect of urban blight. As a result Campania is now the Italian region with the highest number of cities under observation for Camorra infiltration. A total of seventy-one municipal administrations have been dissolved since 1991. An extraordinary number, far surpassing that in the other regions of Italy: forty-four in Sicily, thirty-four in Calabria, seven in Puglia. In the province of Naples alone, town councils have been dissolved in Pozzuoli, Quarto, Marano, Melito, Portici, Ottaviano, San Giuseppe Vesuviano, San Gennaro Vesuviano, Terzigno, Calandrino, Sant’ Antimo, Tufino, Crispano, Casamarciano, Nola, Liveri, Boscoreale, Poggiomarino, Pompei, Ercolano, Pimonte, Casola di Napoli, Sant’ Antonio Abate, Santa Maria la Carità, Torre Annunziata, Torre del Greco, Volla, Brusciano, Acerra, Casoria, Pomigliano d’ Arco, and Frattamaggiore. Only nine of the ninety-two municipalities in the province of Naples have never had external commissioners, inquiries, or monitoring. Clan businesses have determined zoning regulations, infiltrated local sanitation services, purchased land immediately prior to its being zoned for building and then subcontracted the construction of shopping centers, and imposed patron saints’ days festivities that depend on their multiservice companies, from catering to cleaning, from transportation to trash collection.

Never in the economy of a region has there been such a widespread, crushing criminal presence as in Campania in the last ten years. Unlike the Sicilian Mafia groups, the Camorra clans don’t need politicians; it’s the politicians who need the System. In Campania a deliberate strategy leaves the political structures that are most visible, those under media scrutiny, formally immune to connivances and contiguities. But in the countryside, in the towns where the clans need armed protection and cover for fugitives, and where their economic maneuvers are more exposed, alliances between politicians and Camorra families are tighter. Camorra clans rise to power through their commercial empires. And that allows them to control everything else.

The business-criminal transformation of the suburbs of Secondigliano and Scampia was crafted by the Licciardi family, whose center of operations at Masseria Cardone is practically impregnable. The boss Gennaro Licciardi, known as ‘a scigna—la scimmia, the monkey—for his striking resemblance to a gorilla or an orangutan, initiated the metamorphosis. In the late 1980s Licciardi was the Secondigliano lieutenant to Liugi Giuliano, the boss of Forcella, an area in the heart of Naples. The outskirts were considered an awful place—a territory without stores or shopping centers, on the margins of every kind of wealth, where not even the leeches could extort enough cuts to feed themselves on. But Licciardi realized the area could become a hub for drug sales, a free port for transportation, and a collection point for cheap labor. A place that would soon be sprouting the scaffolding of new construction as the city expanded. Gennaro Licciardi did not succeed in fully implementing his strategy. He died at thirty-eight, in prison, of an incredibly banal umbilical hernia—a pathetic end for a boss. Especially because he’d once been involved in a brawl with members of the two big Camorra fronts, the Nuova Camorra Organizzata and the Nuova Famiglia, while awaiting a hearing in the Naples courthouse lockup. He was stabbed sixteen times, all over his body. But he’d come out alive.

The Licciardi family transformed what was merely a reservoir of cheap labor into a machine for the narcotics trade: an international criminal business. Thousands of people were co-opted, enrolled, or crushed by the System. Clothes and drugs. Business investments before all else. After the death of Gennaro the monkey, his brothers Pietro and Vincenzo took over the militant side of the clan, but it was Maria, known as ‘a piccerella—la piccoletta or the little one—who wielded the economic power.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, Pietro Licciardi transferred the majority of his own investments, legal and illegal, to Prague and Brno. Criminal activity in the Czech Republic was completely controlled by the Secondigliano clan, which applied the logic of the productive outskirts and set out to corner the German market. Pietro Licciardi had a manager’s profile, and his business associates called him “the Roman emperor” because of his authoritarian attitude and arrogant belief that the entire world was an extension of Secondigliano. He’d opened a clothing store in China—a commercial pied-à-terre in Taiwan—to take advantage of cheap labor and move in on the internal Chinese market. He was arrested in Prague in June 1999. Licciardi was a ruthless fighter, accused of ordering the bomb that was placed on Via Cristallini in the Sanità neighborhood in 1998 during the conflicts between the outlying and center-city clans. A bomb to punish the entire neighborhood, not merely the clan leaders. When the car exploded, metal and glass went flying like bullets, hitting thirteen people. But there wasn’t sufficient proof to convict him and he was acquitted. The Licciardi clan’s primary commercial activities in Italy were in the garment and retail industry, centered around Castelnuovo del Garda in the Veneto. Not far from there, in Portogruaro, Pietro Licciardi’s brother-in-law Vincenzo Pernice was arrested, along with some clan supporters, including Renato Peluso, who lived in Castelnuovo del Garda. As a fugitive Pietro Licciardi was harbored by Veneto retailers and businessmen tied to the clan—not clan members in the full sense of the term, but accomplices intimately involved in the business-criminal organization. In addition to possessing a remarkable talent for business, the Licciardis also had a military squadron. Subsequent to Pietro’s and Maria’s arrests, the clan is run by Vincenzo Licciardi, the fugitive boss who coordinates both military and economic activities.

The Licciardi clan has always been particularly vindictive. In 1991 they brutally avenged the death of Gennaro Licciardi’s nephew, Vincenzo Esposito. Heir to the ruling family in Secondigliano, Vincenzo was known as il principino, the little prince. He was twenty-one when he was killed in Monterosa, a neighborhood run by the Prestieris, one of the families in the Alliance. He’d gone there on his motorcycle to demand an explanation for the violent treatment some of his friends had received. With his helmet on, he was “mistaken” for a killer and shot. The Licciardis accused the Di Lauros, close allies of the Prestieris, of supplying the killers for the hit. According to the pentito or “penitent” Luigi Giuliano, it was Di Lauro himself who orchestrated the little prince’s murder because he’d been meddling too much in certain affairs. Whatever the motive, Licciardi power was so unassailable that the clans involved were required to purge those potentially responsible for Esposito’s death. They instigated a slaughter that in days left fourteen people dead for their direct or indirect involvement in the murder of the young heir.

The System also transformed classic extortion and usury practices. Aware that shopkeepers needed cash and banks were becoming increasingly rigid, the clans situated themselves between suppliers and retailers. Retailers who must purchase their own merchandise can either pay in cash or with drafts, but if they pay in cash things cost half to two-thirds less, so both retailer and supplier prefer this method. The clans have become hidden financiers, offering cash at 10 percent interest on average. In this way a corporate relationship is automatically established among the buyer, the seller, and the clan. The proceeds are split fifty-fifty, but if a retailer runs into debt, higher and higher percentages flow into the clan’s coffers, and he is eventually reduced to a straw man on a monthly salary. Unlike banks, which seize everything when someone falls into debt, the clans continue to utilize their assets by letting the experienced individuals who’ve lost their property continue to work. According to a pentito in the 2004 DDA investigation, 50 percent of the shops in Naples alone are actually run by the Camorra.

Only beggar clans inept at business and desperate to survive still practice the kind of monthly extortions seen in Nanni Loy’s film Mi manda Picone, or the door-to-door rounds at Christmas, Easter, and on August 15. Everything has changed. The Nuvoletta clan of Marano, on the northern outskirts of Naples, set up a more efficient extortion racket based on reciprocal advantage and the taxing of supplies. Giuseppe Gala, known as Showman, had become one of the most valued reps in the food business. He was much in demand, representing Bauli and Von Holten, and through Vip Alimentari he became the exclusive Parmalat rep in Marano clan territory. He boasted of his talent in a wiretapped conversation submitted to the Naples DDA judges in the fall of 2003: “I’ve burned them all, we’re the strongest on the market.”

The companies Peppe Gala handled were, in fact, guaranteed representation throughout his territory as well as a high number of orders. And retailers and supermarkets were more than happy to deal with him since he could pressure suppliers into offering bigger discounts. Being a System man, Showman also controlled transportation, which meant he could ensure favorable prices and prompt delivery.

Products “adopted” by the clans are not imposed through intimidation but rather by means of advantageous pricing. The concerns Gala represented declared they had been victims of the Camorra racket and had had to submit to the diktat of the clans. Yet data from Confcommercio—the Italian business confederation—reveals that from 1998 to 2003 the companies that turned to Gala experienced a 40 to 80 percent increase in annual sales. Gala’s financial strategies even resolved the clans’ problems of ready cash. He went so far as to impose a surcharge on panettone, the ubiquitous Christmas cake, to give year-end bonuses to the families of imprisoned Nuvoletta clan members. Success was fatal to Showman, however. According to state witnesses, he tried to become the exclusive agent for the drug market as well. The Nuvoletta family wouldn’t hear of it. In January 2003 he was found dead in his car; he’d been burned alive.

The Nuvolettas are the only family outside Sicily that sits in the cupola, the high command of Cosa Nostra. Not simply allies or affiliates, they are one of the most powerful groups in the bosom of the Mafia, with structural ties to the Corleones. So powerful—according to pentito Giovanni Brusca—that when in the late 1990s the Sicilians decided to plant bombs all over Italy, they asked the Marano clan for advice and cooperation. The Nuvolettas thought the idea was crazy, a strategy that had more to do with political favors than military results. They refused to participate in the attacks or provide logistical support, a refusal expressed without any hint of reprisal. Totò Riina personally implored the boss Angelo Nuvoletta to corrupt the judges in his first mass trial, but here too the Marano clan refused to help the military wing of the Corleone family. During the feuds within La Nuova Famiglia, after their victory over Cutolo, the Nuvolettas sent for Giovanni Brusca, the boss of San Giovanni Jato and the murderer of Judge Giovanni Falcone.* They wanted Brusca to eliminate five people in Campania and dissolve two of them in acid. They called him the way you’d call a plumber. He disclosed to the judges the technique for dissolving Luigi and Vittorio Vastarella:

We gave instructions for the purchase of a hundred liters of hydrochloric acid, and we also needed two-hundred-liter metal containers, the kind normally used for storing olive oil, with the top part cut off. In our experience, each container takes fifty liters of acid, and seeing as how the suppression of two people was anticipated, we had them prepare two.

The Nuvolettas, in cooperation with the Nettuno and Polverino subclans, also altered narcotraffic investment strategies, creating a popular shareholding system for cocaine. A 2004 Naples DDA investigation revealed that the clan was allowing everyone to participate in the acquisition of cocaine via intermediaries. Retirees, workers, and small businessmen would hand over money to agents, who then invested it in drug lots. If you invested your pension of 600 euros in cocaine, you’d double your money in a month. The only guarantee was the middleman’s word, but the investment proved regularly advantageous. The profit far outweighed the risk, especially compared with what one would have made in bank interest. The only disadvantage was organizational: small investors were often required to stash pats of cocaine—a way to distribute the supply and make it practically impossible to confiscate. By involving the lower-middle class, who were far removed from criminal activity but tired of trusting the banks with their assets, the Camorra clans increased the amount of capital available for investment. The Nuvoletta-Polverino group also metamorphosed retail distribution, making barbers and tanning centers the new cocaine retailers. They used straw men to reinvest narcotraffic profits in apartments, hotels, stock in service companies, private schools, even art galleries.

The person accused of handling the majority of Nuvoletta assets was Pietro Nocera. One of the most powerful managers in the area, he preferred to travel by Ferrari or private jet. In 2005 the Naples Court ordered the seizure of properties and companies worth more than 30 million euros, a mere 5 percent of his economic empire. Salvatore Speranza, who turned state’s witness, disclosed that Nocera administered all the Nuvoletta clan money and was responsible for “the organization’s investments in lands and the building trade in general.” The Nuvolettas invest in Emilia Romagna, Veneto, Marche, and Lazio through Enea, a production and labor cooperative that Nocera managed even in hiding. Enea obtained public contracts for millions of euros in Bologna, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Venice, Ascoli Piceno, and Frosinone, all with extraordinary turnover. Nuvoletta business spread to Spain years ago. Nocera went to Tenerife to argue with a clan leader over construction costs for an imposing building complex. Nocera accused him of spending too much on expensive materials. I only ever saw the complex on the Internet: an eloquent website, an enormous complex of swimming pools and cement that the Nuvolettas built to get in on the tourism industry in Spain.

Paolo Di Lauro is a product of the Marano school; he began his criminal career as a Nuvoletta lieutenant. But he gradually took his distance and in the 1990s became the right-hand man of Michele D’Alessandro, the boss of Castellammare, representing him when he went into hiding. Di Lauro’s plan was to coordinate the open-air drug markets using the same logic with which he’d managed store chains and jacket factories. Di Lauro realized that, after Gennaro Licciardi’s death in prison, northern Naples could become the largest open-air drug market Italy or Europe had ever seen, and completely controlled by his men. Paolo Di Lauro had always acted silently and was more skilled at finances than fighting; he never openly invaded other bosses’ territories and never allowed himself to be traced in inquiries or searches.

Among the first to disclose the organization’s flowchart was the Camorra informant Gaetano Conte. An informant with a particularly interesting story: a carabiniere who served as Francesco Cossiga’s bodyguard in Rome. The qualities that led to his escorting the president of the Italian Republic also promoted him to friendship with Di Lauro. After being involved in clan extortions and drug trafficking, Conte decided to collaborate with the authorities, offering a wealth of information and details only a carabiniere would know how to provide.

Paolo Di Lauro is known as Ciruzzo ‘o milionario, Ciruzzo the millionaire. A ridiculous nickname, but such labels have a precise logic, a calibrated sedimentation. I’ve always heard System people called by their nicknames, to the point where first and last names are often diluted or forgotten. No one chooses his own nickname; it emerges suddenly out of somewhere, for some reason, and someone picks up on it. Camorra nicknames are determined by destiny. Paolo Di Lauro was rebaptized Ciruzzo ‘o milionario by Luigi Giuliano, who once saw Di Lauro take his place at the poker table as dozens of hundred-thousand-lire bills fell out of his pockets. “Who’s this,” Giuliano exclaimed, “Ciruzzo ‘o milionario?” A name born on a drunken evening, a flash, the perfect wisecrack.

The anthology of nicknames is infinite. The Nuova Famiglia boss Carmine Alfieri got his name ‘o ‘ntufato, the angry one, thanks to the dissatisfied sneer he wears constantly. Then there are ancestral nicknames that stick to the heirs; Mario Fabbrocino, the Vesuvius-area boss who colonized Argentina with Camorra money, is known as ‘o graunar—the coal merchant—because his ancestors sold coal. Other nicknames spring from Camorristi passions, such as Nicola ‘o wrangler Luongo for his fixation with Wrangler four-wheel drives, the System men’s vehicle of choice. A whole series of nicknames are based on physical traits, such as Giovanni Birra ‘a mazza—club or bat—for his long, thin body; Costantino capaianca Iacomino for his premature capelli bianchi or white hair; Ciro Mazzarella ‘o scellone or angel, for his pronounced shoulder blades that look like an angel’s wings; Nicola ‘o mussuto Pianese for his skin so white it looks like dried cod; Rosario Privato mignolino or pinky finger; Dario De Simone ‘o nano, the dwarf. There are inexplicable nicknames such as that of Antonio di Fraia ‘u urpacchiello, which means a riding crop made from a dried donkey’s penis. Then there’s Carmine Di Girolamo, known as ‘o sbirro or the narc for his ability to involve policemen and carabinieri in his operations. For some unknown reason Ciro Monteriso is known as ‘o mago, the wizard. Pasquale Gallo of Torre Annunziata is ‘o bellillo, or bello for his sweet face. Others are old family names: the Lo Russos are i capitoni or eels, the Mallardos are the Carlantoni, the Belfortes are the Mazzacane—dog killers—and the Piccolos the Quaqquaroni. Vincenzo Mazzarella is ‘o pazzo, the crazy one, and Antonio Di Biasi is pavesino for his habit of munching on pavesino biscuits while out doing a job. Domenico Russo, boss of the Quartieri Spagnoli area in Naples, is called Mimì dei cani, Little Domenico of the dogs, because as a kid he sold puppies along Via Toledo. As for Antonio Carlo D’Onofrio, known as Carlucciello ‘o mangiavati’—Little Charles the cat eater—legend has it that he learned to shoot using stray cats as targets. Gennaro Di Chiara, who bolted violently anytime someone touched his face, earned the name file scupierto or live wire. There are also nicknames based on untranslatable onomatopoeic expressions such as that of Agostino Tardi, known as picc pocc, Domenico di Ronza scipp scipp, or the De Simone family, known as quaglia quaglia, the Aversanos, known as zig zag, Raffaele Giuliano ‘o zuì, and Antonio Bifone zuzù.

All it took for Antonio Di Vicino to become lemon was to order the same drink several times. Vincenzo Benitozzi’s round face earned him the name Cicciobello or fat boy, and Gennaro Lauro became ‘o diciassette, perhaps because his street number was 17. And Giovanni Aprea was punt ‘e curtiello—puntare il coltello or point the knife—because his grandfather played the role of an old Camorrista who teaches the boys to use a knife in Pasquale Squitieri’s 1974 film I guappi.

A well-calibrated nickname, such as Francesco Schiavone’s famous, ferocious Sandokan, can make or break the media fortune of a boss. He earned it for his resemblance to Kabir Bedi, the star of the Italian television series Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, based on Emilio Salgari’s novel. Or Pasquale Tavoletta, known as Zorro for his resemblance to the actor in the TV series. Or Luigi Giuliano, ‘o re—the king—also known as Lovigino because in intimate moments his American lovers would whisper, “I love Luigino.” His brother Carmine is ‘o lione, the lion. Francesco Verde’s alias is ‘o negus, a title of Ethiopian emperors, in honor of his stateliness and longevity as boss. Mario Schiavone is called Menelek after the famous Ethiopian emperor who opposed Italian troops, and Vincenzo Carobene is Gheddafi for his uncanny resemblance to the son of the Libyan general. The boss Francesco Bidognetti is known as Cicciotto di Mezzanotte, because anyone who got in his way would see midnight—the end—even at dawn, but some claim it was because he worked his way up through the ranks by protecting prostitutes. His whole clan came to be known as the Midnight clan.

Nearly every boss has a nickname, an unequivocally unique, identifying feature. A nickname for a boss is like stigmata for a saint, the mark of membership in the System. Anybody can call himself Francesco Schiavone, but there’s only one Sandokan. Anybody can be named Carmine Alfieri, but only one turns around when he hears ‘o ‘ntufato. Anyone can call himself Francesco Verde, but only one answers to the name ‘o negus. Anyone can be listed as Paolo Di Lauro at the registrar’s office, but there’s only one Ciruzzo ‘o milionario.

Ciruzzo had decided to organize his affairs quietly, to use extensive force but remain low key. For a long time he remained unknown even to the police. The only time he was summoned by the authorities before he went into hiding was for an incident involving his son Nunzio, who assaulted a professor who’d dared to reprimand him. Paolo Di Lauro was in direct contact with South American cartels and created vast distribution networks through his alliance with Albanian cartels. Narcotraffic follows precise routes these days. Cocaine heads from South America to Spain, where it’s either picked up or sent overland to Albania. Heroin, on the other hand, comes from Afghanistan, traveling through Bulgaria, Kosovo, and Albania. Hashish and marijuana cross the Mediterranean from North Africa by way of the Turks and Albanians. Di Lauro had direct contact with every point of entry into the drug market, and by adopting a painstaking strategy he became a successful entrepreneur in both leather and narcotics. In 1989 he founded the famous Confezioni Valent di Paolo Di Lauro & Co. Scheduled by statute to terminate activity in 2002, the company was seized in November 2001 by the Court of Naples. Valent had been awarded numerous contracts for cash-and-carry operations throughout Italy, and its corporate potential was enormous, ranging from furniture to fabrics, from meatpacking to mineral water. Valent supplied meals to public and private institutions and oversaw the butchering of all kinds of meats. Its stated objective was to construct hotels, restaurants, entertainment chains, and anything “appropriate for leisure.” According to the statute, “The company may acquire lands and contract or subcontract buildings, shopping centers, or housing.” The City of Naples granted its commercial licence in 1993, and the company was administered by Paolo Di Lauro’s son Cosimo. For reasons connected to the clan, Paolo Di Lauro exited the scene in 1996, passing his shares to his wife, Luisa. The Di Lauro dynasty is built on self-denial. Luisa Di Lauro produced ten children; like the great dames of Italian industry, she increased the number of offspring to keep pace with the family business. Cosimo, Vincenzo, Ciro, Marco, Nunzio, and Salvatore are all clan members; the rest are still minors. Paolo Di Lauro had a predilection for investments in France, with shops in Nice, on rue de Charenton 129 in Paris, and 22 quai Perrache in Lyon. He wanted Italian fashion in France to be shaped by his stores and transported by his trucks; he wanted the power of Scampia to be smelled on the Champs-Élysées.

But in Secondigliano the great Di Lauro company was beginning to show signs of strain. Its many branches had grown hurriedly and autonomously, and the air was thickening in the drug markets. In Scampia, on the other hand, there was the hope that everything would be resolved like the last time, when a solution had been found over a drink. A special drink, consumed while Di Lauro’s son Domenico was lying at death’s door in the hospital after a serious road accident. Domenico was a troubled boy. The children of bosses often fall into a sort of delirium of omnipotence, believing that entire cities and their inhabitants are at their disposal. According to police investigations, in October 2003 Domenico, together with his bodyguard and a group of friends, attacked the town of Casoria, smashing windows, garages, and cars, burning trash bins, splattering doors with spray paint, and melting plastic doorbells with cigarette lighters. Damage his father was able to pay for in silence, with the diplomacy of families who have to make up for any disasters their scions create without compromising their own authority. Domenico was rounding a curve on his motorcycle when he lost control and crashed. He died of his injuries after a few days in a coma. This tragic episode led to a meeting of the leaders, a punishment as well as an amnesty. Everyone in Scampia knows the story. It may not be true, but it has become legendary and is important for understanding how conflicts are resolved within the Camorra.

Legend has it that Paolo Di Lauro’s dauphin, Gennaro Marino, known as McKay, went to comfort the boss in the hospital where Domenico lay dying. Di Lauro accepted his solace and then took him aside and offered him a drink: he pissed in a glass and handed it to McKay. Word had reached the boss of his favorite’s behavior, things he simply could not condone. McKay had made some economic decisions without consulting him, and sums of money had been withdrawn without his knowledge. The boss was aware of his dauphin’s desire for autonomy, and he longed to pardon him, to consider it an excess of exuberance on the part of someone who is too good at what he does. Legend has it that McKay drank it all, every last drop. A swig of piss resolved the first schism to occur within the leadership of the Di Lauro clan. A transient truce, one that no kidney could have drained dry later on.

^*Falcone, who was killed on May 23, 1992, was an important anti-Mafia magistrate and one of the major figures in the 1986–87 Maxi Trial, in which 360 Mafiosi were convicted. Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo—also a magistrate—and three policemen were killed when a roadside bomb exploded as they drove from the airport to Palermo.—Trans.