Precis

Sex, drugs and people smuggling. Emma Alberici braves a no-man's land near Naples to report on a ruthless new crime group that's moving in on the local Mafia. Will the Nigerian Mafia be as hard to root out as the local mob?

"When you enter the organization, you cannot get out other than by death," says Italy's top Mafia investigator.

The Mafia is one of Italy's most famous international business brands, with an estimated annual turnover of $250 billion a year. But its market share is being challenged by a group of ruthless new players.

Foreign Correspondent's Emma Alberici investigates the growing power of Nigerian organised crime in the birthplace of the Italian Mafia.

The director of Italy's anti-Mafia agency says Nigerian crime gangs are organised and dangerous.

"It has many similar traits to Italian Mafia - its oaths, its sense of belonging, the capacity to coerce, the code of silence...even the local Mafia fear them."

Specialists in trafficking humans for sexual slavery and drug running, the Nigerians are now being allowed to run their operations in return for giving the Italian Mafia a cut.

A former prostitute, trafficked from Nigeria, tells us: "There's no pity. If you misbehave...or you can't continue anymore, they will bring their gun and shoot you."

We investigate the two main hubs for Nigerian organised crime in Italy.

North of Naples, Alberici visits Castel Volturno, an almost lawless coastal town, abandoned by the local Camorra Mafia and by the state. Here, the Nigerian Mafia is left alone to use this once "Mafioso Riviera" as a hub for its European operations.

In Sicily, the Mafia's birthplace, we go undercover to expose prostitution and drug houses and catch up with the man named by investigators as one of the Nigerian Mafia's kingpins.

At a secret location, we speak to Roberto Saviano, one of the world's most famous Mafia whistle-blowers. He lost his freedom 13 years ago after revealing the sordid workings of the Camorra Mafia in Naples.

Now living under permanent police guard, Saviano explains the role Nigerian organised crime plays in Italy's homegrown Mafia.

To stay silent, he says, is to be complicit.

Episode teaser

00:00

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: While Italy’s north is in the grips of a health emergency brought on by the corona virus, the south is confronting a crisis of its own: a ruthless new Mafia.

00:06

DR GIUSEPPE AVITABILE:  This kind of Nigerian Mafia is peculiar in this place.

00:20

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Sex, drugs and people smuggling.

00:27

"Are you still scared of them?"

JOY EZEKIEL: : No. Why would I be scared of them?

00:32

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: The Nigerians have arrived. Has the Italian Mafia met its match?

00:36

GIUSEPPE GOVERNALE, anti-Mafia boss: You can only leave by death.

00:47

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Are you scared?

00:49

ROBERTO SAVIANO, Mafia commentator: I’m afraid of continuing to live like this.

00:51

Music

00:53

Castel Volturno GVs. Super:
Castel Volturno, Italy

01:03

Title: The New Mafia

01:10

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  How can a place like this exist in Italy? We’re just a stone’s throw away from the Amalfi Coast and yet there hasn’t been a war here or a flood a fire or an earthquake.

01:17

Alberici to camera. Super:
Reporter
Emma Alberici

Instead, Castel Volturno has been the product of sheer neglect . This is a lawless wasteland,

01:28

Castel Volturno GVs. African men

abandoned by the state.  What makes this town different is that it’s said to be the headquarters of a new emergent Mafia, one that’s coming over on the boats from Africa.

01:36

Joy 100%

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Do you think you were in the hands of the Mafia?

JOY EZEKIEL:  Yes. I was actually in the hands of the Mafias.

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Italian Mafia or Nigerian Mafia?

JOY EZEKIEL:  The Nigerian Mafias. Nigerian Mafia yes.

01:54

Driving shots. Prostitutes on side of road, turn from camera

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Only two years ago, Joy Ezekiel was just like these girls – running for their lives when they see our camera.

02:09

Music

02:19

Sunset over ocean

02:23

Drone shot. Castel Volturno road

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:   On the only road in and out of Castel Volturno, their madams

02:25

Night. Roadside prostitutes

force them to sell sex day and night. They’ve been tricked and traded for large sums of money – often by their own families working with the Nigerian Mafia.

JOY EZEKIEL:  All they know is money.

02:30

Joy 100%. Super:
Joy Ezekiel

They even changed my name.  They changed my name. I was not bearing my name. They changed everything. See, I was like living the life of someone else. It wasn’t me anymore. I was like a shadow of myself. Just like a living dead, I should say.

02:49

Lunch meeting with Joy in restaurant

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: A safe distance from Castel Volturno, we meet Joy for lunch.  She’s among the 80 percent of Nigerian women in Italy the UN says

03:09

Night. Castel Volturno. Roadside prostitutes

are trafficked by the Nigerian Mafia.  It’s the first time Joy has told her story.

JOY EZEKIEL:  Whenever this car came, they took us to the bush. I don’t know who I’m going with. I don’t know who is this person. What does he have for me? Is he going to beat me up? Is he going to kill me? Because there was nobody there. They can just come with the car. How much the price?

03:21

Joy 100%

Sometimes five Euros, 10 Euros.

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Did they always pay you?

JOY EZEKIEL:  Sometimes no. There was sometimes, they’ll come, they’ll show you a gun. They won’t pay. They’ll do what they want, then leave.

03:46

Car. Night. Castel Volturno

Music

03:57

Alberici approaches woman

Emma: "We're from ABC Australia. My name is Emma…"

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  It’s too dangerous for Joy to return to Castel Volturno, so another former prostitute agrees to go undercover to show how the Nigerian Mafia controls the women it traffics. 

04:04

Sound recordist puts wire on woman who meets with second woman

Sound Recordist: "You are now recording."

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: To protect them we don’t reveal their identities.

04:22

Woman 1: "You’re going to pay 35,000 Euros?"

Woman 2: "Yes." 

Woman 1: "And you don’t know how you will pay?"

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: This young women says her madam is demanding nearly $60,000 before she’ll set her free.

04:35

Woman 1: "Come on my sister, I love you. I want to help you."

Woman 2: "I’m scared."

Woman 1: "No, no. Don’t be scared. Alright, alright, there is no problem. I was one like you before. I was deceived like you.  You send the money to Nigeria. Did you take any oath with them?"

Woman 2: "Yes."

04:49

Woman 1: "Oath or Juju? We call it Juju. You swear, your madam make you swear… that what?"

Woman 2:  "That if I don’t pay the money, I will die."

Woman 1: "If you don't pay her money you will die!"

05:08

Photos. Joy

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Before she left Nigeria, 23 year old Joy was also forced into a so-called Juju ceremony by her family’s Pentecostal pastor. The woman promised her a new life in Italy – food and lodgings and a job as a hairdresser. Joy took a blood oath and was told if she betrayed those looking after her, she or a family member would die.

05:25

Joy interview in restaurant

JOY EZEKIEL:  So I think maybe that's a normal thing. I did it. They cut off parts of my hair, the private parts, my armpits and all of that. They cut it and they used a fowl – a chicken -- they cut it with the blood on top of my head, that sort of thing.

05:55

Night. Street shots. Driving past prostitutes

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  These voodoo rites bond Nigerian women to secret and ruthless organised crime groups, known by names like Black Axe. 

JOY EZEKIEL: They’re just brotherhoods coming together, fighting for no reason.

06:12

Joy interview in restaurant

Just to have power… just to kill… Happy to kill. They don't pity anyone. There is no pity. If you misbehave or you're tired you can’t continue anymore, they will just bring their gun and shoot, kill the person.

06:29

Map showing route Nigeria to Italy

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Joy’s dreams of la dolce vita started to sour shortly after she left her home in Benin City, Nigeria to travel four thousand kilometres through the Sahara to Libya and then onto Italy by boat. In Libya, she says she was raped by seven men in one night.

06:47

Joy interview in restaurant

In Italy, her Nigerian madam showed no mercy.

07:11

JOY EZEKIEL: Because when I came out I was actually pregnant, four months. But she made me remove it. So I was forced to remove the pregnancy and with blood and everything I have to go to the streets.

07:16

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Was it a doctor?

JOY EZEKIEL: It's a doctor. At home, not in a hospital. An African man, inside his house, that’s where they do it. That's it.

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: And you had to go straight out to work?

JOY EZEKIEL: Yeah.

07:33

Night. Castel Volturno. Prostitutes

Music

07:52

ROBERTO SAVIANO, Author: Prostitution, which is fundamental, is managed by women. At the heart of the Nigerian underworld, the people in charge are the women.

07:58

Saviano 100%

They also command the men, who are the foot soldiers. 

08:07

Saviano sanding by window

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:   Roberto Saviano has been in hiding for almost 13 years.

08:13

His book Gomorrah blew the lid on the operations of one of Italy's main Mafia rings, the Camorra.  Now it wants him dead. 

08:20

Saviano in security car

Roberto agreed to meet us in a secret location where he’s protected by his security detail. The Camorra is the presiding Mafia power in Naples and in Castel Volturno. He tells us how one of its clans is operating in tandem with the Nigerians.

08:31

Saviano 100%

ROBERTO SAVIANO, Author: That area was handed over by the Italians to the Nigerians to manage. It was an admission above all else that it was no longer useful for the Camorra Casalesi clan to command street to street in Castel Volturno

08:58

African men riding bikes/walking on street

because there’s an enormous migrant community that could be managed by the Nigerian Mafia. Secondly, the Nigerian Mafia pays the Italian Mafia for the right to be there.

09:21

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:   Roberto calls Castel Volturno an African city on the Mediterranean, but it wasn’t always.

09:38

Castel Volturno seafront

It used to be a summer playground for the southern Italian elite, but they fled when the Camorra ground this place down.

09:46

African men

It’s now somewhere people to go hide. Almost half the town’s population of nearly 50,000 are undocumented migrants.

ROBERTO SAVIANO, Author: The Nigerian Mafia installed itself,

09:55

Saviano 100%

exploiting the flow of migrants arriving to pick tomatoes, exploiting an entire area whose work is unauthorised.

10:13

GFX Turf war images

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Co-operation was forged between the Nigerians and Italians after a bloody turf war 12 years ago. Reminders of the carnage are everywhere. One hundred and twenty-two bullets were fired – six Africans were killed. Now, the Camorra lets

10:19

Drone shot. Castel Volturno coastline

the Nigerian Mafia base its European drugs and prostitution networks here and it takes a cut.

10:43

Rubbish on streets

ROBERTO SAVIANO, Author: No criminal network in Italy can exist without alliances and permission from the Italian Mafia clans.

10:56

Saviano 100%

A certain percentage of their business goes to the Italian Mafia clans.  In particular, when it comes to drug dealing, there is a great rapport between the organisations, especially with the Camorra.

11:07

Sunrise. Castel Volturno

Music 

11:22

Ambulance arrives at hospital

11:28

Interiors. Pineta Grande hospital

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  The Pineta Grande sees more drug mules than any other hospital in Italy. The health system is free for all – even the undocumented migrants.

11:31

Hospital workers with couple at reception

Hospital receptionist:  "Have you any document with pictures?"

11:43

Hospital worker: "This shows he has the document, but not with him."

11:47

Alberici with Avitabile looking at CT scans

DR GIUSEPPE AVITABILE: This is a CT scan, simple CT scan without contrast.

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Dr Giuseppe Avitabile is a radiologist here. He’s stunned by the enormity of the drug problem.

11:56

DR GIUSEPPE AVITABILE: Firstly it was young men – African people – they were used as mules, and now we are seeing even women.

12:08

These 'eggs' they can contain 10, 20 grams of cocaine, highly concentrated in this stuff. And for every person, we can recognise 30-40 'eggs' in the body. So the total amount is like 400, 500 grams of cocaine in the body of these people. Because if only one of these 'eggs' break, the people can overdose in some minutes. The risk is very high and a lot of people die for this risk.

12:29

Drone shot. Castel Volturno road

Music

12:55

Drone shot. Hospital

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  The hospital is the only site in Castel Volturno that’s being built up rather than run down. 130 million dollars is being spent here.  When the Camorra found out, it wanted its share.

12:58

Alberici walks with Schiavone and his security detail

Vincenzo Schiavone is the hospital’s owner. When he refused the Mafia’s demands, they blew up his car.

13:16

Schiavone interview on beach

VINCENZO SCHIAVONE:  My reporting of the Camorra played a part in reducing the presence of the Camorra in this area and produced arrests. It helped clean up the area a little. From 2007, 2008 I've lived, now for 12 years, under full police protection.

13:28

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Vincenzo takes us to what used to be his favourite beach club. He used to go swimming here with his family.

"Do you now feel threatened by the Nigerian Mafia?"

VINCENZO SCHIAVONE:  “We have seen the effects.

13:49

We have seen women with their stomachs open and intestines out. We have seen people come in with heads struck with machetes, bitten. They are terrible. They are violent. It’s a sort of tribal violence.

14:10

Castel Volturno GVs

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Vincenzo despairs at how the government has deserted this once promising part of the Italian Riviera. All that prospers here now is the black market.

14:40

Driving shot

Music

14:52

Ext. DIA

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: The sprawling headquarters of Italy's anti-Mafia intelligence agency, the D.I.A., sits just outside Rome. It names the Nigerian Mafia as a growing and violent scourge.

15:00

Governale interview

"What sort of threat does the Nigerian Mafia pose in Italy?"

15:18

Governale 100%

GIUSEPPE GOVERNALE:  When we talk about the Nigerian crime we talk about "Mafia". Why do we call it "Mafia"? They share traits with the Italian Mafia: its oaths, its sense of belonging, the capacity to coerce, the code of silence, absolute secrecy. When you enter the Mafia, you cannot leave other than by death.

15:23

DIA meeting

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: The team of senior analysts and detectives who work here are exclusively dedicated to hunting Mafia and the Nigerian connection. Organised crime is now Italy's biggest enterprise – worth even more than Fiat. These investigators say the Mafia generates income of 250 billion dollars a year. For Giuseppe Governale, a Sicilian, the fight against the Mafia is personal.

15:55

Governale interview

"In the years you’ve been the head of intelligence, head of anti-Mafia, have you ever felt discouraged by the enormity of the task?"

GIUSEPPE GOVERNALE:  No, you need enthusiasm, energy. As an adult, I've been lucky to do the job I dreamt of doing as a child.

16:31

When I left Palermo, it was a time when there was a murder on the streets almost every day. When people tell me what's happened to them I feel charged like a battery.

16:49

Governale shows photo

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Director Governale keeps a photo on his desk of himself as a nine year old. He’s with the local police chief, a man he idolised as a child. Shortly after this moment was captured, the policeman was killed by the Mafia -- blown up in a car bomb attack.

17:02

Drone shot. Palermo GV/Palermo street GVs

Music

17:22

Director Governale was born in Palermo, the capital of Sicily and the birthplace of Italy's oldest Mafia – Cosa Nostra.  Like all Sicilians, he knows the brutality behind the beauty of this place.  On Palermo's waterfront, an iconic image boldly remembers two celebrated anti-Mafia prosecutors -- Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – murdered by the Mafia in 1992. Decades on, this city is now said to be the other main hub of the Nigerian Mafia.

17:28

Governale 100%

GIUSEPPE GOVERNALE:  In the most populous parts of Palermo where this type of crime rate is most felt,

18:16

Drone shot over street market

we’ve determined that even the Italian Mafia fears them.

18:23

Ballaro street market

18:33

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Palermo’s Ballaro street market – full of colour and culinary quirks – doesn’t feel like a place where danger lingers.  But among all the bustle, there’s the hustle. The most lucrative trade here is in narcotics.

18:40

Jacob on street

New arrivals from Africa who aren’t granted asylum are drawn to Ballaro to eke out a living in the shadow economy. They’re easy prey for Mafia recruiters.

19:09

Alberici walks with Jacob

So I’m here with Jacob which isn’t his real name. He’s asked me to protect his identity because it’s only been six weeks since he was released from jail having served 18 months for drug dealing. Now it’s not a life he particularly wants to return to, but at the moment he’s in a bind. He doesn’t see much of an alternative.

19:29

Jacob and Alberici into apartment

He agreed to talk to us only if we changed his voice.

19:59

Jacob interview

JACOB:  I was cooking drugs for them.

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Cooking the drugs? What sort of drugs?

JACOB:  It’s called crack. Crack cocaine.

20:05

I feel pressure because I don’t have any job to do. Some people who know me, they are calling me in to do it for them. I refuse because I don’t want to do it again.

20:15

African men on streets

Music

20:27

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Like so many others, Jacob has no passport, no job and no prospects, but the pressure to get back into the drug game isn’t only coming from the Nigerians.

"The person at the top,

20:32

Jacob interview

were they African or Italian?"

JACOB:  It was always an Italian. As a foreigner you don’t get to commit high crimes like he who is born here. It’s his country.

20:49

Men in laneways

Music

21:03

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Authorities say Black Axe snuck in to Ballaro during boat arrivals in the '80s and '90s. Cosa Nostra has now struck an unholy alliance with the Nigerians, charging them pizzo, protection money, to operate, on Cosa Nostra land.

21:07

GIUSEPPE GOVERNALE:  Italian Mafiosi are people who are used to a high level of danger.

21:34

Governale 100%

To achieve their respect means that they are afraid that the Nigerians have the capacity to exercise the same magnitude of violence. Because in that world, everything is determined, not by rules, but rather by who has the capacity to carry out violence, to be pitiless.

21:41

African man fitted with hidden camera into connection house

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  An African Ballaro resident agreed to help us reveal the Nigerian Mafia’s operations, but only if we keep his identity secret. He takes a hidden camera into one of the area’s 30 or so brothels.

22:14

They call them connection houses. Sex isn’t the only thing for sale here; you can also buy alcohol and drugs, but only Africans are allowed in.

22:37

Hidden camera footage. Man buys heroin

- Listen to me. One gram of heroin.
- 45 Euros.
- No, 35 Euros.
- Okay, no problem. No problem.
- Okay, give me 30 minutes and I’m coming.”

22:52

Drone shot. Driving through park

Music

23:11

Alberici driving through park past prostitutes

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  When Nigerian sex workers are not in Palermo’s connection houses, their madams force them on to the streets.  We’re cutting through a park on the outskirts of Palermo.

23:16

It’s, as you can see, enormous.  It’s called la favorita and it is a favourite haunt of local men looking for sex. The price of sex with these trafficked women is less than ten dollars. It can take them years to pay off their madams.

23:32

Drone shots of park

Music

23:55

Governale interview

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  How have you managed to distinguish this is Mafia activity as opposed to any other sort of crime?

24:03

GIUSEPPE GOVERNALE:  Because they’re organised. There is a boss, they have acronyms for identifying roles. for example, they have a MOD – Minister of Defence –  in Italy. Imagine that!

24:11

Music

24:22

Mohamed walking

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: We tracked down the man the D.I.A. refers to as the Nigerian Mafia’s Minister of Defence. He’s 27 year old Mohamed Abubakar.  He was held in custody for three years on charges of being a Black Axe ringleader.

MOHAMED ABUBAKAR: I was accused.

24:26

Mohamed interview

But I’m not a member of Black Axe, I have never heard anything about Black Axe. I don’t know anything about Black Axe. I was just accused.

24:45

Interior. Courtroom trial

24:52

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Foreign Correspondent was given rare access to film inside Palermo's city court, where Mohamed was recently acquitted of Mafia involvement. Another 12 African men are still on trial; all accused by one informant, not of specific crimes, but of belonging to a Mafia group.

24:58

PROSECUTOR: "You say he’s the head of Black Axe, Is that what you’re saying? You’re saying he’s in fact one of the founding members?"

25:21

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  The Nigerians are the first foreign Mafia to be tried under Italy's anti-Mafia laws, but Palermo's prosecutors are finding it hard to make the charges stick. Five Nigerians have already been acquitted. These men are appealing convictions from a lower court.

25:30

Pecoraro in court with clients

Defence lawyer Cinzia Pecoraro is adamant the whole court process is a sham.

25:51

Pecoraro 100%

CINZIA PECORARO, Defence Lawyer: I absolutely believe that there is no Mafia in Palermo. No Nigerian Mafia. I have lived through this for years, I know what Mafia looks like, the true Mafia.

25:57

Hidden camera footage. Di Giacomo brothers in jail

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  The legal system is struggling to prove the Nigerians are in fact Mafia, but Italy's homegrown Mafia is in no doubt. This hidden camera footage captured in jail shows crime bosses and brothers Giuseppe and Giovanni di Giacomo discussing just that.

26:08

Giovanni: "Where are these guys from?"

Giuseppe: " Nigerians. They're Nigerians."

Giovanni: "Ah, really?"

Giuseppe: "F*** Giovanni, you know it is."

Giovanni:  "Are they tough? Are they really f**ed up?"

Giuseppe: "Yes. It’s like we are. You know how we are?"

Giovanni: "They understand that they need to stay in their place?"

Giuseppe: " F*** of course. They bring us money and business, understand?"

26:28

Joy in shop with customer

Music

27:03

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: Back in safe territory an hour away from Castel Volturno, Joy Ezekiel is enjoying her new life, making and selling African homewares. She’s working with a group of nuns who’ve rescued 600 trafficked women in the region. After spending 12 harrowing months as a sex slave, Joy reported her Nigerian captors to police.

27:05

Joy: "This is the shape of a heart…"

Customer:  "Yes, beautiful, I saw that.

Joy: "Always with love."

Customer: "And with hope."

27:35

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: The shop is called New Hope, and that’s exactly what Joy has now, with a job she loves in a country she’s proud to call home. She’s even gone back to school.

27:49

JOY EZEKIEL:  The only thing that makes me happy is that I’m free today.

28:06

Joy interview in restaurant

It’s behind me now. Even if sometimes, whenever I go to bed, I find it difficult to sleep. But I just let it go. Life goes on.

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: It has to.

JOY EZEKIEL: Life goes on.

28:11

Music

28:25

Joy in class

28:29

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter: What are your dreams, Joy?

28:33

JOY EZEKIEL: My dreams in life is helping the less privileged, and other girls who’ve passed through this kind of experience. To help them out, to give them courage, and hope for the future.

28:35

Saviano with security detail out of car into park to greet Alberici

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  One man who will never be free from the Mafia is Roberto Saviano.

28:57

Is it rare that you are out in a park like this?

ROBERTO SAVIANO:  A little, yes. Once in a while I can take a walk but it feels a little strange.

29:08

Alberici and Saviano walk in park

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Five plain clothed policemen are watching Roberto around the clock. He’s determined to keep exposing Italy’s underbelly and how it interacts with the “New Nigerian Mafia”.

29:24

ROBERTO SAVIANO:  To declare a truth, I knew on some level it could put me at risk. But I didn’t believe that I’d be condemned to death. When a soldier leaves for war he knows he will return either dead or alive. But he doesn’t put into the equation that he’ll be injured, not dead but not alive either. And that’s exactly what’s happened to me. I couldn’t have imagined that there would be this place of limbo that would be so terrible. Not dead or alive.

29:39

EMMA ALBERICI, Reporter:  Roberto doesn’t know what his future looks like, except that he’ll never stay quiet. To be silent, he says, is to be complicit.

30:24

Credits (see below)

30:40

Outpoint

31:18