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1 – Percentuale di imprese che dichiarano di vedere spesso o abbastanza nella zona in cui opera l'unità locale di impresa i seguenti fenomeni di disordine sociale. Confronto tra macroaree. Tassi percentuali sul numero di imprese intervistate nella stessa zona 59 . Anno 2008
Citations
... Particularly equity, at the margin, has financed the negative shocks to cash flows and large cash infusions into smaller and riskier companies. The study's results also seem consistent with a previous survey by Mugellini (2012) on Italian companies oppressed by OC, according to which only 4.5% of firms report being the targets of threats, intimidation and extortion (we find 8% of respondents to be approached by OC). ...
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the resilience of Italian companies one year after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak by examining the companies' choices and opinions regarding the welfare state, criminal approaches and mergers and acquisitions (M&As) during the pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors proposed a conceptual framework based on a combination of private vs public protection and business resilience theory and adopted a concurrent embedded mixed-method approach, using an online survey of 219 entrepreneurs.
Findings
The authors find the respondents showing high resilience to the crisis and strongly unaffected by organised crime's (OC's) predatory role; the State seems to have quickly and effectively met the financial needs of sampled Italian companies, at least in the short term.
Practical implications
Whilst welfare can be highly effective for companies to combat crime, regulators should recognise that public protection may decrease with time, leaving companies open to long-term challenges.
Originality/value
The authors believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the entrepreneurship literature because this is the first study to explore how entrepreneurs deal with financing problems in a context characterised by a strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and OC pressure.
... Di Gennaro and La Spina (2016;see also La Spina 2008;La Spina et al. 2014) suggest that victimization surveys are not reliable instruments to measure extortion (p. 4), though it is worth noting that their criticism is based on Italian victimization surveys, particularly one by Confcommercio- GFK Eurisko (2007), and another by TRANSCRIME (Mugellini 2012). Their main contention is that the surveys' low response rates (6.3% and 14%, respectively) lead to self-selected samples unlikely to produce reliable outcomes (Di Gennaro and La Spina 2016, p. 4). ...
Objectives
Research consistently shows that crime concentrates on a few repeatedly victimized places and targets. In this paper we examine whether the same is true for extortion against businesses. We then test whether the factors that explain the likelihood of becoming a victim of extortion also explain the number of incidents suffered by victimized businesses. The alternative is that extortion concentration is a function of event dependence.
Methods
Drawing on Mexico’s commercial victimization survey, we determine whether repeat victimization occurs by chance by comparing the observed distribution to that expected under a Poisson process. Next, we utilize a multilevel negative binomial-logit hurdle model to examine whether area- and business-level predictors of victimization are also associated with the number of repeat extortions suffered by businesses.
Results
Findings suggest that extortion is highly concentrated, and that the predictors of repeated extortion differ from those that predict the likelihood of becoming a victim of extortion. While area-level variables showed a modest association with the likelihood of extortion victimization, they were not significant predictors of repeat incidents. Similarly, most business-level variables significantly associated with victimization risk showed insignificant (and sometimes contrary) associations with victimization concentration. Overall, unexplained differences in extortion concentration at the business-level were unaffected by predictors of extortion prevalence.
Conclusions
The inconsistent associations of predictors across the hurdle components suggest that extortion prevalence and concentration are fueled by two distinct processes, an interpretation congruent with theoretical expectations regarding extortion that considers that repeats are likely fueled by a process of event dependence.
... Scaglione (2014) calculates that around 372,000 companies are affected, while another study claims that about 40,000 illegal lenders are operating in the country (Unioncamere 2014). According to one survey (Mugellini 2012), 4.5 % of businesses reported being the targets of threats, intimidation and extortion. 4 Where breakdowns of the sectors involved exist, they indicate that wholesale and retail trades, construction companies and manufacturers are the most vulnerable (Commissario 2014). ...
One of the consequences of Italy’s on-going financial crisis has been rising civil society activism and media attention to the growing phenomenon of families and small businesses becoming indebted to illegal moneylenders. Much of the public discourse focuses on indications that major organized crime groups are strengthening their participation in this sector and appropriating homes and business assets as a means of laundering money and expanding their presence in the legal economy. This article examines the multiple and complex factors that leave rising numbers of small business owners with few alternatives to seeking illegal sources of credit in order to continue operating financially. Focusing on the city of Rome and drawing on in-depth interviews with support groups and former debtors, as well as on a wide range of documentation and statistical data, it provides a multiscalar analysis of the ways in which local social norms concerning informal credit and the exigencies of day-to-day business practice on a micro scale are interwoven with the macro-level effects of legislation, banking practices, and the capacity of institutions mandated to fight illegal lending. It questions whether an adequate system of alternatives to borrowing illegally exists and the extent to which the official mechanisms in place to disincentivize this practice are effective.
... Pertanto le statistiche sull'estorsione non dovrebbero essere considerate affidabili ai fini di un'analisi dell'entità dell'estorsione organizzata in Italia. Oltre alle statistiche ufficiali, altri dati volti a valutare l'entità del fenomeno in Italia possono essere tratti dalle indagini di vittimizzazione e dalle stime relative agli introiti illegali ottenuti dai GCO in Italia (Lisciandra 2014; Mugellini 2012; Transcrime 2013). @BULLET il 6,6 per cento delle imprese italiane dichiarò di aver denunciato un episodio estorsivo alle forze di polizia, mentre il 19,8 per cento disse di aver informato la polizia senza sporgere una denuncia formale. ...
Il rapporto «Estorsione organizzata nell’Unione Europea: fattori di vulnerabilità» analizza le forme di estorsione a opera della criminalità organizzata in sei Stati membri dell’Unione Europea. L’analisi chiarisce i fattori di rischio e di vulnerabilità per le imprese in due settori dell’economia, quello agricolo e quello dell’ospitalità, e all’interno delle comunità cinesi. Basandosi sui risultati dell’analisi, il rapporto suggerisce nuove politiche per far fronte all’estorsione organizzata nella UE. Questo rapporto è stato realizzato grazie al lavoro congiunto del Center for the Study of Democracy, l’Instituto de Ciencias Forenses y de la Seguridad dell’Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, il centro di ricerca Transcrime dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano e il Vitosha Research, e con il supporto della Guardia Civil in Spagna.
... Second, manufacturing is a highly concentrated sector with a small number of enterprises and relatively high levels of corporate security. Excluding thefts by employees (see Mugellini and Caneppele (2012) for a review of crimes against businesses in Italy), widescale connections with organized crime groups must be ruled out. ...
... Finally it should be borne in mind that, generally speaking, thefts in hospitals, like any other crime against businesses, may register a high 'dark number' (i.e. a high number of incidents that are not reported to the police or in any case are not made public). Managers, in fact, may prefer not to involve police officers but to address crimes internally (e.g. through audit or corporate security) in order to avoid damage in terms of reputation or budget (Dugato, Favarin, Gergely & Agnes, 2013;Mugellini & Caneppele, 2012). ...
Along with counterfeiting, theft of medicines is emerging as the new frontier of pharmaceutical crime. In Italy between 2006 and 2013 one hospital out of ten has registered thefts of pharmaceuticals, suffering, on average, an economic loss of about 330 thousands EUR for each episode.
This report represents the first study on this booming but almost unknown criminal phenomenon. In particular it carries out:
• An exploration of the background behind pharmaceutical theft and of the drivers that influence the demand and the supply of stolen medicines (Chapter 1);
• An analysis, based on cases reported by media, of thefts of medicines from Italian hospitals between 2006 and 2013 (Chapter 2).
... According to the previous studies, crime against business is actually frequent and costly (Mugellini, 2013). In addition, it is likely to be connected with the activity of organised crime groups (Alvazzi Del Frate, 2004;Mugellini & Caneppele, 2012;Tulyakov, 2004). ...
... As the call for tender has explicitly called for a predominantly CAWI mode -countries with a relatively large population (Poland) that has a relatively lower Internet penetration were left out. The other "large" country left out, Italy, was selected to the feasibility study that was done in preparation for this pilot study (Mugellini & Caneppele, 2012). In addition, two other small countries (Luxembourg and Malta) and three mid-size countries (Denmark, Netherland and the Czech Republic) were excluded. ...
The project “EU Survey to assess the level and impact of crimes against business - Stage 2: Piloting the survey module” aims at carrying out a pilot survey on the victimisation of businesses across twenty selected European countries.
The main objectives of this project are:
• Implementing a business victimisation pilot survey in unexplored countries of the EU
• Developing a common methodology
• Collecting comparable data
• Analysing data in order to produce comparable results
• Reporting the results in order to produce policy implications
The pilot survey method implements a phased multi-mode approach, first of all by conducting a representative interviewer-facilitated telephone survey (PHASE I) and secondly by redirecting these enterprises to fill in the rest of the questionnaire in a dedicated CAWI interface (PHASE II).
The statistical unit was the local unit or the branch of the enterprises, and the entire universe of the survey was defined as companies having at least one employee, with market or for-profit activities and with available telephone numbers in the sampling frames used.
The pilot survey was implemented in 20 selected Member States of the European Union and each country sample had a minimum of 500 interviews and a maximum of 2,000 interviews, depending on the number of active enterprises in the given country. The survey was conducted on the field between 23rd of May and 3rd of September 2012.
This study has been carried out for the Directorate-General Home Affairs in the European Commission as result of a procurement procedure
Spanish institutions have been developing new methods in order to be more efficient in terms of data management (see Section 8.6 and 10.8). The present chapter will focus on the analysis of data regarding different aspects of the confiscation of assets in Spain.
Criminal assets recovery and management is implemented by different governmental institutions. The Intelligence Centre against Organised Crime (CICO) (see Section 10.8) and the Special Anti-Drug Prosecution Office (Fiscalia Special Anti Drogas) have been designated as the Spanish contact points for asset recovery (Palomo et al., 2009). At present, Spain has not yet officially designated an asset recovery office. The Plan Nacional sobre Drogas (PNSD) was created to manage confiscated assets related to the illicit traffic of drugs and money laundering in relation to drug trafficking offenses, and it could be considered an Asset Management Office for assets of these types.
Illegal markets in Spain are important sources of proceeds for the economy of the organised crime groups (OCGs) active in the country, and a significant matter of concern for Spanish society (Lopez, 2012).
The presence of organised crime in Spain is not limited to recent decades, since gangs and organised smugglers have operated in the country throughout history (Resa Nestares, 2001). But Spanish OCGs are now able to create alliances with foreign criminal groups, and this has enabled them to increase their activities in diverse illegal markets (Castro Moral & Jiménez, 2010).
This situation requires the application of specialized measures in order to reduce the extent of illegal activities involving organised crime (Gimenez-Salinas, 2010). During 2010, the Spanish Presidency promoted a series of measures in the short to medium term to develop effective strategies against organised crime (Ministerio del Interior & CICO, 2013), while a wide array of agencies and legal instruments have been introduced (see below).
However, despite the importance of this phenomenon, it has not been extensively addressed by academic research in Spain, which in most cases is restricted to theoretical explanations rather than the conduct of empirical studies (see Section 8.6 for a literature review). The lack of data and restrictions on access to official statistics on organised crime cases may explain the lack of empirical studies and impede research on organised crime in Spain.