Secrets of who pays what to Sicilian Mafia revealed for first time

The Independent
By Peter Popham in Rome
20 January 2005


An accounts book has fallen into the hands of the Sicilian police that reveals for the first time the rules and regulations which dictate who must pay pizzo - protection money - to the Mafia, how much they must pay, and who is exempt.

The ledger, which details illegal protection payments for the Vucciria area of Palermo, provides the most detailed picture yet of how the Mafia continues to control commercial activity in the Sicilian capital, more than 10 years after it gave up the gun.

The discovery comes amid renewed controversy over the power and importance of the Mafia stirred up by a television documentary at the weekend which claimed that 80 per cent of Sicilian businesses pay pizzo.

The governor of the island, Salvatore Cuffaro, himself under investigation for Mafia connections, sent a letter of protest about the programme to the Italian head of state, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and demanded a special meeting of the "vigilance committee" of RAI, the Italian state broadcaster.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=602576

Wasn't aware that such a book existed. I must get a hold of it, got be a classic. I'm in middle of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States."

when they where only people they could pay/find to help/spy in italy..
you can google for confirmation..

:-)