standing up to the gangsters.

The round-up of the Gambinos and associates is part of the new initiative, and the campaign is far from over. The Italian authorities have been shocked at the results of studies set up by the Prodi government into the impact of organised crime on the Italian economy. Globally the linked mafia economies are a multi-trillion-dollar operation. In Italy the various mafias move roughly the equivalent of 40 per cent of the state budget a year.

The mountains of uncollected rubbish in Naples this winter have given alarming proof of the strength of the local Mafia, the Camorra, across the region. "It's a huge business, a way of life and a mentality, which runs throughout Naples and Campania," a financial journalist observed last month, "it will take generations to remove."

The new kids on the block, the United Holy Crown (from south east Italy) and their allies in the Albanian and Balkan mafias, are, if anything, more worrying than the Camorra

because they are less predictable and extremely violent. They deal in anything from drugs to human parts, nuclear waste and illegal immigrants. Through the migrant traffic they are getting a grip on seasonal agriculture across much of southern Europe, including Greece and southern France.

The biggest problem for the authorities now is forward intelligence. Judge Giovanni Falcone, one of the most successful anti-Mafia investigators, never thought he could win the fight against the Cosa Nostra with a knock-out blow. "Whenever we uncover a major Mafia operation or network, we know there are people out there who have moved on and are already opening new lines of operations which it'll take years to uncover," said Falcone before he was blown up in his car outside Palermo airport in May 1992.

Already there will be amici degli amici filling the space left by those hauled into custody, and opening up new lines of business from Kabul to Kansas, and Palermo to Poughkeepsie.