Italy’s mafia crisis takes a foreign turn as new criminal networks rise
Italy’s organized crime landscape is shifting in ways that would have been unrecognizable to the old Sicilian bosses. Foreign criminal networks — Nigerian syndicates, Albanian gangs, and Chinese triads — have carved out significant territory across the country, challenging the historic dominance of the Cosa Nostra, Camorra, and ‘Ndrangheta.
A new criminal geography
According to Italy’s national anti-mafia directorate, the DIA, foreign organized crime groups are now operating in at least 14 of Italy’s 20 regions. Nigerian criminal networks alone have been linked to prostitution rings, drug trafficking, and extortion rackets spanning Naples, Palermo, and Turin. Albanian groups, meanwhile, have effectively taken over large portions of the cocaine supply chain in northern Italy, moving product that was once controlled exclusively by Calabrian clans.
The numbers are stark. In 2023, Italian prosecutors opened over 300 formal investigations involving foreign criminal organizations — a 40 percent increase compared to five years earlier. That’s not a blip. That’s a structural change.
Why now, and why Italy
Geography plays a role. Italy’s long coastlines and its proximity to North Africa and the Balkans make it a natural entry point into Europe. But it’s not just geography. The traditional Italian mafias have, in some ways, created the conditions for this shift themselves. As the ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra expanded into wholesale drug trafficking at the international level, they needed foreign partners. And those partners learned fast.
“What we’re seeing is a maturation process,” said a senior official at the Italian Interior Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity. “These groups came in as subcontractors. Now some of them are running their own operations independently.”
Still, it’s complicated. In many cases, foreign networks and Italian mafias aren’t competing — they’re collaborating. Albanian traffickers move Camorra cocaine. Nigerian groups pay ‘Ndrangheta bosses for permission to operate in certain territories. The lines between old and new are blurrier than the headlines suggest.
Social fabric under pressure
The human cost is visible in Italian cities. In Rome’s Tor Bella Monaca neighborhood, open drug markets have persisted for years, now run by a mixture of local and foreign criminal actors. In Milan’s suburbs, investigators have documented Chinese criminal groups running underground banking systems that launder money across three continents.
Communities caught in the middle often don’t know where to turn.
What comes next
Italian authorities are pushing for stronger EU-level cooperation, arguing that no single country can effectively tackle criminal networks that operate across borders with ease. Europol has increased joint operations with Italian prosecutors, and Brussels is expected to propose tighter financial intelligence sharing rules by late 2025.
But law enforcement resources are stretched thin, and prosecutors warn that the legal frameworks for prosecuting foreign criminal organizations often lag behind the reality on the ground. Italy’s mafia problem didn’t disappear. It just got a new passport.
