My name is Marisa Merico,
and I was a former Mafia princess
to one of the most feared crime families in Italy.
This is how crime works.
The 'Ndrangheta do have different methods of violence,
with hit men, car bombings, people being put in acid tanks.
It's really, it's bad. They're vicious.
I guess that's because they mean business.
And they're saying,
"We do this to show you not to step on our toes.
And do not, because this is what's gonna happen."
There isn't one single Italian Mafia.
You've got the 'Ndrangheta,
you've got the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra.
So, and then within that, there's families.
It'd be very difficult for one family
just to stand on their own.
The one is a little bit further ahead,
is in with the initiatives, with the logistical side of it.
But they will also need the other family
for something else that maybe they can't do.
So they all complement each other.
The biggest clans are still the ones
that have been there quite a few decades.
At the age of 22, I took over the DiGiovine clan,
which is my family.
If you're in the family, you've got the blood,
you don't need to be made.
One of the daughters marries someone,
he's technically not blood,
but there are rituals where people do get made.
And they go to the Madonna della Montagna,
go procession through the streets.
The Madonna gets carried.
There's all singing and dancing.
It's actually a very religious festival.
And then afterwards there'll be a party,
and someone will be made.
That is one of the customs
and one of the rituals, if you will.
What makes the Italian Mafia different
from the American Mafia
is the Italian Mafia is old school.
The American Mafia say they don't involve the women.
There's obviously a perspective of the women.
The Americans are far more bolshie with it.
A lot do expect
respect like that.
Whereas the Italians, you earn that respect.
You have the boss, which is at the top.
The boss is the capo.
Then a consigliere, who gives advice.
The difference with the Italians and Americans,
the generals are the capo
of each group under them.
That would be a big insult to an Italian real capo.
And then you've got, under that, sort of the generals
that look over, if a project was coming in
or there were exchange of moneys, anything like that.
Underneath them, you've got the lieutenants.
Then you're going right down to the soldiers.
So they're the ones on the street.
They're the ones that are applying violence.
It's just like the ranking of an army.
Because it is an army, made up mainly of family.
So, my father was the boss of our clan,
and he was looked upon as a boss
from our family down in southern Italy.
A boss' child or another member of the family
can only take over his role,
obviously, when he'd dead or in prison.
And even in prison, he's still carrying on the role.
But you can't just give it to somebody.
It's showing how intelligent they are
and having that assertiveness
that you need in a powerful position.
My father was arrested, and I had to take over,
and my uncle was trying to fight me for it.
I was always surprised. Why did I get chosen?
Well, they must have seen that you were strong enough.
I was my father's voice.
And my day-to-day tasks would be the logistical side.
If any product was coming in, the payments.
I took the money. Taking the money to Switzerland,
taking the money for payments for product.
The women have never run the Mafia.
Or, never known to "technically" run the Mafia.
But actually, from from the sidelines,
of course.
So, the 'Ndrangheta have such a reputation of being feared
because of the violence being used in the past.
But there are rules. You don't touch women,
you don't touch children, you don't touch the elderly.
Just stay in your lane and do your job
and not trample on anybody else's territory.
One clan can't take out another member of another clan.
It doesn't work that way.
It's much more to do with
where that killing's going to take place
and whose territory that's in.
Well, it happened with my family that a Camorra guy
came and asked for permission
to kill someone that was on our patch,
my nonna and my father's.
If they'd just said no, it could have led us
to war with the Camorra.
Or if we'd reciprocated, you know,
needed that help in the future,
they could have said no.
So, the law of omertà is the law of silence,
where you just don't speak.
You just do not talk about it.
I was arrested, and I've never spoken about anything.
You know, people say, because I wrote the book,
"Are you not scared of repercussions?"
I said, "No, because I spoke of things
that were in my trial and things I did myself."
I've never spoken about anything.
And there's other things I would never speak about.
The homicides are declining
because it's not lucrative for them to kill people.
It's a last resort.
It just flares up sentiments
that the Mafia don't want.
Foggiana, a Mafia which is in Puglia,
they are acting very violent at this time.
They're asserting themselves and their position.
And unless there was fear, people wouldn't care.
Unfortunately, you get the casualties.
There has been reports of young children being killed.
There must be someone outside or something
that's affiliated with someone,
because they wouldn't give an order to kill a child.
So, with the 'Ndrangheta,
it's said they're making $60 billion a year.
The pandemic has made the 'Ndrangheta stronger.
The 'Ndrangheta will have had a big influence
on buying failing businesses
or forcing the owners out of a business
and taking over it.
There's many people that were actually,
were going to close the shops, close businesses.
But once they are involved, they own you.
The wealth is divided with what each family does.
You can't have one family do a lot less
and be entitled to the same amount of money.
You know, my family started on the streets
tobacco smuggling and all sorts.
We were going to open up travel agents as well.
You know, we had a leather factory.
Anything that's through a legitimate company.
We invested everywhere that you could,
especially to clean the money.
There was a lot of kidnappings in the '70s in Italy,
but that was to do with a government.
It was a gang even my Dad knew them
that kidnapped very wealthy people.
There's been a decline in the kidnapping
because it just doesn't look good with the authorities.
They just come down really hard on them.
And, of course, they found other ways,
such as the drug trafficking,
that could be far more lucrative
than having half the police force after you
because of one kidnapping.
I think the 'Ndrangheta got involved more and more
in the drugs trade towards the '70s,
when there was the big hit of heroin.
The heroin would be from Turkey,
coming through from North Africa.
I mean, my father went into cannabis.
He was supplying nine countries.
There was tons of cannabis coming
across to Italy from Morocco.
It's been said that 97% of the cocaine
that comes through Italy goes through Gioia Tauro.
Gioia Tauro has always been a port the 'Ndrangheta has used.
And also because it's in their territory,
so they can control it.
They have many on the payroll.
And not just the workers at the port,
the authorities around it are on the payroll.
The 'Ndrangheta does have strong links with the cartels,
because the language is very similar.
And then there's that thing of Mediterranean bond.
The drugs that are imported,
they could be something that's literally under your nose.
They could be taken out by schoolchildren
going for the day to the port,
and then something under the bus could be put there.
Then it would be taken out.
You got the weighing of it.
But you know already where it's going,
who's having what, who's got to pay what.
It could be independent people
that are in the drugs trade
that want to buy a certain amount of product.
We had people that you'd never dream of that used to buy.
People very wealthy, in very good positions,
but their sideline was selling that.
Police do get paid off.
The 'Ndrangheta has police agents
on their payroll, definitely.
Police, judges, lawyers.
We're talking about the garbage, you know,
influencing who gets the contracts for that.
So it could be an 'Ndrangheta-affiliated company
that can do the waste disposal,
so the inside person can sway
that they will get the contract
and it won't be this other company. It will be theirs.
My father's escaped from prison three times.
He corrupted prison guards
and a doctor in the prison,
and he escaped.
Police never tended to stop us,
but they would come and raid us every now and then.
And then we'd know when the raids would come in,
because there was an informant inside
the police that would tell us.
I'd be sat in the kitchen with loads of money around me
and sat on a loose tile where it's got a gun under.
They would never make me stand up and search me.
There'd be bazookas, AK-47s, explosives.
You know, we're talking about heavy military weapons.
We'd go around with guns in our cars quite often,
for protection, because that life,
down the line there's always some sort of violence.
My family was the DiGiovine family.
My nonna, she was like the boy mentality.
She wanted her own.
So much so that she left and went up north to Milan
and created her own group, a clan.
She could see that there was far more lucrative ways
of making money there.
The areas that we had control of were in Milan.
I was born in Milan. My mother was British.
She went over to Italy as an au pair.
Met my father by accident.
So, I moved into the UK with my mother in 1979.
I was 9 years old.
I'd never forgotten my Italian.
My mom still always spoke to me in Italian as well.
My father was arrested in '91.
Was on the run for a year,
and then he got arrested again in 1992.
And that was the time that I had to take over for him
for about a year.
It was never for power or money or ...
it was genuinely to show him
that he didn't need a boy.
I as a girl could do that.
So, the crimes I was accused of,
that I got convicted of,
are the money laundering to the Swiss bank account,
then ultimately into a UK banking system.
It's the money laundering, drug running at some point,
gun running. Went down to southern Italy,
took the guns myself with my then husband.
I got a three-years, nine-month sentence.
I served half of that.
I was extradited to Italy,
and I got
a 10-year sentence over there,
which was reduced to six years.
It wasn't that I was too scared of speaking out at the time.
It was my, it was almost, it was my environment.
It was my life. It was my family.
I love them. We would do anything for each other,
and that went with it.
I regret the choices I made.
I regret some of my decisions.
The date that I left was
when my whole family was, massive arrest the year later.
Up till that point, I was still leading the operations.
And the main reason was my daughter.
I really took a step back when I got pregnant
and then I had my child.
But then when you get a responsibility comes along
such as your child, everything sort of,
it's a slap in the face.
I didn't want her to come and see me in prison
like I had seen my father in prison all them years before.
Like, history repeating itself.
Now he's out of the witness protection,
and he's a qualified chef.
So, since leaving prison,
I decided 10 years later to write my book.
Now I'm a criminologist.
I help where I can through my knowledge,
experience of my life in that.
The 'Ndrangheta rose obviously through
the misfortune of the Cosa Nostra.
Cosa Nostra was largely in decline
because of the arrests
and the authorities having a crackdown.
You know, the links with South America were then,
well, almost not given,
but they would have been taken by the 'Ndrangheta.
There's currently some of the biggest Mafia trials ever
against the 'Ndrangheta at this moment in time.
Every so often,
they manage to get enough evidence to bring them down.
See, it's like a domino effect.
Once one starts to collaborate with justice,
the rest follow.
Because they want to do the crime,
but they don't want to do the time.
In 20 years, I see the 'Ndrangheta
still in the same position.
The corruption goes as far as the government.
And unless that changes, you will never bring it down.
It's the authorities that ultimately run a port, isn't it?
It needs to be the government that doesn't turn a blind eye.
Nothing can be done about Gioia Tauro,
not for as long as there's corruption around it.
Sorry, it's my Dad.
That's my father ringing. [chuckles]