More Business

The System revolves not just around the textile mafia.  It also maintains a vast empire on drug trafficking where many people are getting rich dealing with drugs.


But there came a point when they saw the opportunity to do business with the Chinese. The high-tech market was tested and when they proved it to be genuine, digital cameras, video cameras and power tools with brands such as Bosch, Hammer, etc., were marketed all over Europe.  The Secondigliano System has actually foreseen this opportunity even before their government did.  I am wondering if this is what started the global demand for cheap digital and video cameras around the world.  Back then when I was in Dubai, I got the chance to go the the Chinese-dominated place they call the International City.  It’s like a big warehouse-like supermarket where you can find almost everything that you need and want, made in China.  Mobile phones are everywhere as well as cheap clothes, mobile accessories, furniture and appliances.


Everything was doing fine and everyone was getting along very well with The System.  Until one of the bosses initiated transformation.


I actually lost track of this transformation that somewhere around after the middle of the story, I began to think of how it was shifted to drugs and all its structure that I had to go back to the first few chapters to find out and refresh myself.


It all pointed back to the suburbs of Secondigliano and Scampia, under the hands of one of the families, the Licciardi family.


La Scimmia – the monkey – was the one who started the metamorphosis.  He transformed the place – Scampia, a place without a shopping center, or even a store, yes, this awful, into a drug sales hub.


One of the strategies they implemented to get this place started was getting almost everybody to be in the business.  They even have a plan suited for pensioners: if you invested your 300 euros worth of pension, you’d double your money’s worth in only a month’s time.  I was really surprised that they were able to even tap this segment of the market.  You might think that this is a little risky since you don’t have anything to hold on to but their word.  But in an economy that has grown sick and tired of trusting banks, this proves to be more of an advantage since, as Saviano said, the profit outweighed the risk.