Insurance Plan With a Bombshell in It
The lower house of Italy’s parliament approved an insurance fund for businesses whose property is damaged because they refuse to pay extortion money to the Mafia.
The fund will repay merchants up to $415,000 for each attack on their property if they help identify the gangsters involved.
A study in December said 60% of shops, bars and restaurants pay up rather than have their property burned or bombed. In Sicily’s capital of Palermo, a Mafia stronghold, nearly all small businesses pay extortioners.
Organized crime earns an estimated $25 billion a year from extortion, the study said.
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