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During February 2010, Italian officials in Rome seized 30,000 wildlife products while searching through the luggage of more than 3,000 passengers.

Source:  AFP, “World cops target traditional healers over smuggled wildlife,” Google News, March 5, 2010.

The number of corruption cases handled by Italian Officials increased by 229 percent in 2009 from 2008.

Source: “Corruption is surging in Italy, says state auditor,” Reuters, February 17, 2010.

Between 2008 and the start of 2010, Italian authorities seized assets worth $9.78 Billion from organized crime groups within the country.

Source:  Rachel Donadio, “Berlusconi Announces an Anti-Mafia Plan,” New York Times, January 28, 2010.

Organized Crime groups in Italy generated $189 Billion (135 Billion Euros) in revenue in 2009, with $109 Billion (78 Billion Euros) in profits.

Source:  Stephen Brown and Paolo Biondi, “Italian mobsters buck downturn, may target bourse,” Reuters, January 27, 2010.

From A Crime So Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner:

According to a Council on Europe study, over the last ten years, 1 percent of Moldova’s population of women ages eighteen to forty left to become prostitutes in Italy.

Source: E. Benjamin Skinner, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Slavery, (New York: Free Press, 2008), page 164.

The Government of Italy spends $14.5 Billion to treat drug addicts in the country.

Source: “Shared Responsibility,” Colombian Embassy to Great Britain and Northern Ireland, accessed: October 14, 2009.

According to a study organized by Italy’s anti-mafia commission, in 2009 13 million people in Italy were directly living in areas where the Mafia exerts influence over their daily lives.

Source:  Tom Kington, “Mafia’s influence hovers over 13m Italians, says report,” Guardian, October 1, 2009.

In 2004, 25 percent of all murders in Italy were of foreign women.  The high number is believed to have been caused by human trafficking groups killing trafficked women when they escaped or attempted to testify.

Source:  Siddarth Kara, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, (New York: Colombia University Press, 2009), page 94.

7 Billion Euros ($9.9 Billion) worth of toxic waste is smuggled each year by members of Italian Mafia clans.

The 7 Billion Euros in trash value is higher than the 6 Billion Euro value in 2008.

Source:  “Italy: Toxic waste traffic ‘worth 7 billion euros a year’,” Adnkronos, August 11, 2009.
2008 Figure: Robin Pomeroy, “Naples garbage is mafia gold,” Reuters, January 9, 2008.