One of the few crimes on the rise in the first half of 2020 is usury , i.e. the practice of lending money at high interest. It is a phenomenon whose existence has been known since Roman times and has reached the present day, alternating periods of legal condemnation and others of decriminalization. In all this time its characteristics have changed as well as the actors involved. If in the past they were the loan sharks and tiebreakers to be the only protagonists, certain financial companies, banks and online services have now been added to provide usurious interest loans. Without forgetting, as we will see, that mafia organizations try to control, or at least, participate in this market. The victims are often people who, in addition to economic difficulties, have no possibility of accessing legal credit and for this reason rely on illegal alternative sources. Furthermore, the logics that are established between usurer and usurer mean that the phenomenon is mostly unknown. In fact, the complaints and cases that emerge in the newspapers represent only the tip of the iceberg of a much more complex and unknown reality.
To deal with the phenomenon of usury, the Italian State in 1996 decided to tighten the penalties and regulate the rights and protections of the victims. Through law 108/1996 , article 644 of the Penal Code was modified , distinguishing between objective (or presumed) and subjective (or concrete) usury. The first is triggered if interest rates higher than the threshold set every three months by the Ministry of the Treasury are applied ; the second, on the other hand, concerns the practice with which the usurer applies interest, below the threshold, but in any case disproportionate to the possibilities of the victim. A step forward compared to the past if we also consider the introduction of the aggravating circumstance of bank usury. Indeed, where the perpetrator works in a professional, banking or financial intermediation business, the penalties increase by half. The operative part of article 644 highlights how the aggravating circumstance aims to repress the acquisition by loan sharks, sometimes linked to criminal organizations, of companies or real estate.
The prevention and solidarity fund
There is a solidarity fund for usury victims: although there is no interest, only 20% of those who access the fund return it
To effectively combat usury, two funds have been set up: one for prevention and the other for solidarity. The prevention fundmakes sums of money available to the Collective Guarantee Consortium (which is responsible for facilitating companies’ access to finance) and to the anti-usury foundations with which to provide banks with guarantees on loans granted to individuals in difficulty. The guarantees are used by the lender, for example the bank, to be sure that the person requesting the loan is able to repay it. Income and credit history are mainly requested as guarantees, ie the list of all the loans obtained and repaid (those with a bad credit history, ie those who have not paid off a loan in the past or have repaid it late have difficulty to access a new one). The Solidarity Fund, on the other hand, offers those who denounce usurers the opportunity to re-enter the legal economy through an interest-free mortgage. However, the annual report edited by the Extraordinary Office for the Coordination of Anti-racket and Anti-usury initiatives points out a problem: although the mortgage is interest-free, only 20% of those who access the fund repay it. For this reason, since 2019 the granting of a non-repayable contribution has been set up for the victims.
Mafias and usury
In the last ten years various clans have been involved in crimes of association with the mafia method aimed at usury : from the Casalesi to the Mancuso, from the De Stefano to the Casamonica. From North to South, with different interest rates reaching the record in Rome, equal to 1500%. For example, in Dia’s report for the second half of 2019, it emerges how the Casamonica clan , also thanks to its intimidating force, has become one of the main players in the theater of usury. This is evident in the “Gramigna-bis” operation where, according to the Court of Rome, the clan is allegedly involved in drug trafficking, extortion and usury with mafia aggravating circumstance.
By providing this type of financing, criminal organizations introduce the proceeds of various illegal activities into the legal economy . Usury is therefore a great way to launder money . But there’s more. In fact, by imposing usurious rates that are difficult for entrepreneurs to bear, they manage to take possession of their companies. In doing so, organized crime has the opportunity to enter sectors of the legal economy, such as tenders for European funds, healthcare, construction contracts and more. All this also allows them to take their first steps in territories with low mafia roots and present themselves as a legitimate economic force.
Usury in times of crisis
There were 98 episodes reported from January 1 to June 30 of this year, increasing by 6.5% compared to the same period in 2019
As already mentioned, usury is a largely unknown phenomenon because it is often the victim himself who seeks out the usurer for reasons of necessity. Reason why the complaints are few and not able to represent the true dimensions of the phenomenon. Added to this, as underlined in the dossier prepared by Libera in collaboration with lavialibera “The perfect storm. The hands of organized crime on the pandemic”, that usury is not denounced because “it is often based on the victim’s lack of perception of being ‘crushed’ in an illicit deal, it is based on silence and on a mafia victim-usurer relationship which follows a psychological, almost physical dependence. And out of fear, but sometimes also out of shame, hardly anyone shows up before the police to report”. Despite the few reports, it is possible to observe how the episodes reported from 1 January to 30 June of this year are 98, increasing by 6.5% compared to the same period of 2019 (92). This increase, albeit slight, was favored by the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, on the one hand, requests to obtain legal credit increased by 4.8% compared to last year, as demonstrated by the analyzes conducted by the central financial intermediation risk (Crif); on the other hand, however, the guarantees demanded by banks and legal financial companies did not allow the groups most in difficulty to receive financing. Criminal organizations, on the other hand, guaranteed loans immediately and above all without any guarantee. It should be noted, however, that usury is not the monopoly of the mafia. In fact, given the possibilities of earning and of cheating, there are many criminals who enter this market. Similarly, not only entrepreneurs seek usurious loans: often it is the poorest who enter this criminal circuit.
The dramatic social significance that usury has in this historic moment is confirmed in the third report of the permanent monitoring and analysis body on the risk of infiltration into the economy by mafia-type organized crime : “Given the small number of reports present in the inter-force database, some consequences of its practice (usury) still arouse a significant social alarm especially in a society that is still feeling the effects of the lockdown and the post Covid-19 social emergency”.
Between financial and insurance companies
The health crisis, therefore, could open the doors, which are already open, to usury, especially the banking one. The 4.8% increase in credit applications went hand in hand with the number of new financial and insurance companies born between January and October 2020. Compared to the same period of 2019, 222 more were born in Italy, passing from 5334 to 5556 (+4%). With a distribution that is anything but homogeneous: they grew by 50% in Molise while they decreased by 15% in Piedmont. In Emilia-Romagna, a region that has remained practically stable in the number of financial companies (+1%), on the other hand, there is the province which has contracted the record increase: Piacenza has gone from 14 to 39 (+179%). The problem, as Libera points out in the dossier, is that among the financial and insurance companies “there are also thepawnshops and those that engage in personal loans outside the banking system ; sectors where illegal activities could creep in.
Urgent loan shark wanted
In recent years there has been a large number of online sites that connect individuals to request or offer loans. On the website “Loans between individuals”, one of the trendiest websites, we read Anna’s comment: “I am six months pregnant and due to covid my husband has not been able to work. Please, I need 500 euros by today because to support other expenses, now, we find ourselves having to pay medical expenses necessary for my health and that of my son. I beg you”. The figures are not always in two zeros: scrolling through the comments there are loan applications of up to 50,000 euros. For each loan offer ” without guarantees ” and “even for bad payers” we find a hundred requests from desperate men and women, without work and with a family to support, students who are struggling to pay for accommodation and university fees. On other sites, such as Private Loan, it is sufficient to fill in a form to contact someone able to provide a loan (although in reality, by clicking on “request a loan” you are directed to www.supermoney.eu, banned in 2018 by the Agcm due to user data management). These sites are not the only ones. It is enough to type on the internet “urgent usurer wanted”, “day loans from loan sharks”, “loans from usurers without guarantee” that from your sofa at home it is possible to enter a criminal circuit from which it is then very difficult to get out. Often the only solution is to report.
