A Trade They Can’t Refuse: Wie Mafia, Unternehmen und Staat im illegalen Abfallhandel in Italien kooperieren

Abstract

In Italy, illicit trafficking and disposal of (hazardous) waste is a major problem for people and the environment, especially in the south of the country. All three major Italian mafia-organizations, waste-producing industries, waste management companies as well as the state and (local) politicians are involved. This paper deals with the question of how these actors cooperate and benefit from each other. Several theoretical concepts are used to answer this question: Ruggiero’s dirty economies, Passas’s symbiotic relationships (both describe cooperations between legal and illegal actors) and the concept of state-corporate crime. With the help of these concepts, the popular procedures in the illicit waste trafficking in Italy are interpreted from a criminological perspective. It then becomes apparent that the established concepts – at least for cooperations between the state and organized crime groups – are only partially sufficient to fully understand the phenomena.