FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators hold banners reading "Camorra worth nothing" as they march in the southern city of Naples March 21, 2009. Tens of thousands of people marched in Naples on Saturday to commemorate the victims of the mafia and demand an end to the stranglehold of organised crime on southern Italy. REUTERS/ Ciro De Luca
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's mafia clans are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to buy favour with poor families facing financial ruin, prosecutors and officials say, and are offering loans and food in what is seen as an age-old recruitment tactic.
After decades of campaigning to curb the influence of the mafia in its traditional strongholds of southern Italy, officials and charitable groups say the pandemic has created new opportunities for organised crime to regain people's loyalties.
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