Mafia revenue '7% of Italy's GDP'

Revenue from organised crime in Italy adds up to €85bn or about 7% of the country's gross domestic product, a small business lobby said.

The Confesercenti lobby laid out its estimates as part of a campaign to increase attention on the extent of organised crime, particularly in Sicily, the Naples area, Calabria in the "toe" of Italy and Puglia in the "heel" of the boot-shaped peninsula.

Another business lobby, made up of industrialists in Sicily, recently said it would expel any member who pays the "pizzo", as extorted "protection" money is known.

In recent years, a small numbers of merchants, factory owners and industrialists who have denounced extortion attempts by mobsters have seen their businesses torched or company vehicles damaged.

A couple of businessmen in the last decade have been killed for having defied the Mafia on paying the money.

Many businessmen in Italy's underdeveloped south have long considered the "pizzo" a kind of unavoidable "tax" to pay.

Entanglements with organised crime are often blamed for discouraging investment in the south.

Tano Grasso, the head of Italy's anti-racket commission, said on state TV that for every 100 foreign investors who come to Italy, only one sets up business in the south.

The latest estimates of organised crime's grip on business in Italy have said that as many as 80% of business in parts of Sicily pay "protection" money.

But many experts say it is impossible to really know the amount, because relatively few extortion episodes are reported to police.