The Nuova Camorra Organizzata (in English: New Organized Camorra) was an Italian Camorra criminal organization founded in the late 1970s by a Neapolitan Camorrista, Raffaele Cutolo, in the region of Campania. It was also known by the initials NCO. The organization was established with the purpose of reforming the traditional Camorra, which had long controlled cigarette smuggling and extortion schemes in Neapolitan markets. To this end, Cutolo created a structured and hierarchical organization, in stark contrast to the Camorra in that period, which was traditionally composed of independent and autonomous clans.The resistible rise of the new Neapolitan Camorra, by Percy Allum & Felia Allum, in: Gundle & Parker, The new Italian Republic, pp. 238-39 The members of the NCO were often referred to by rival Camorristi and Italian law enforcement as "Cutoliani".
According to the Italian Justice Department, by 1981 the NCO had become the strongest Camorra clan and one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the nation, providing a living for at least 200,000 people in the Neapolitan area alone. It was distinctly hostile to the Sicilian Mafia, but had an alliance with numerous Calabrian 'Ndrangheta clans, in addition to the Nuova Grande Camorra Pugliese, which was the precursor to the Sacra Corona Unita in Apulia.Behan, The Camorra, pp. 51-52
It was eventually supplanted by the Nuova Famiglia, a confederation of clans consisting of Michele Zaza (a Camorra boss with strong ties with Cosa Nostra), the Gionta clan (from Torre Annunziata), the Nuvoletta clan from Marano, Antonio Bardellino from San Cipriano d'Aversa and Casal di Principe, the Alfieri clan of Saviano led by Carmine Alfieri, the Galasso clan of Poggiomarino (led by Pasquale Galasso), the Giuliano clan from Naples' quarter Forcella (led by Luigi Giuliano) and the Vollaro clan from Portici (led by Luigi Vollaro). Alfieri clan
It was considered extinct in the late 1980s, when many of its bosses and members were killed or imprisoned. Cutolo's Camorra is described as the "mass Camorra" of unemployed youth specializing in protection rackets, while Carmine Alfieri's Camorra was seen as the "political Camorra" because of its ability to obtain public sector contracts through political contacts, and Lorenzo Nuvoletta's as the "business Camorra" reinvesting drug money into construction following the 1980 earthquake.Behan, See Naples and Die, Google Print, p. 255
History
Formation The founder of this organization, Raffaele Cutolo, also known as "'o Professore" (The Professor), was born on 20 December 1941 in Ottaviano, a village in the hinterland of Naples. At the age of 18, on 24 February 1963, he committed his first homicide and was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, reduced to 24 years after appeal. He was sent to Poggioreale, Naples' prison. Entering the prison world on a murder conviction made Cutolo a "tough guy".
In prison Cutolo learned the rules of the criminal world: he became a "man of honour," paid respect to more powerful inmates, and started gathering personal prestige because of his striking personality. He never lost sight of his ambition and his desire to become one of the biggest bosses of the Neapolitan underworld.Jacquemet, Credibility in Court, pp. 28-30
Cutolo had established himself as a ringleader, when Antonio Spavone aka "'o Malommo" (The Badman), was transferred to the Poggioreale prison. He challenged Spavone to a knife fight in the courtyard (a practise called 'o dichiaramento, the declaration), but Spavone refused. The challenged boss allegedly limited himself to a reply: "Today's young men want to die young by whatever means." Spavone was released from prison shortly after this event. From his prison cell, Cutolo ordered the murder of Spavone. A hitman, allegedly Cutolo's friend, shot him in the face from short range with a shotgun. Spavone survived the ambush, but the shotgun blast left considerable damage to his facial structure, which required plastic surgery. Spavone immediately resigned from his highly visible role as a Camorra boss.
It was from within Naples' Poggioreale prison that Cutolo built the NCO. He began by befriending young inmates unfamiliar with jail, giving them a sense of identity and worth, so much so that when they were released they would send Cutolo "flowers" (i.e. money), which enabled him to increase his network. He helped poorer prisoners by buying food for them from the jail store, or arranging for food to be sent in from outside. In such ways, Cutolo created many "debts" or "rain cheques" which he would cash at the opportune moment. As his following grew, he also began to exercise a monopoly of violence within a number of prisons, thus increasing his power. By the early 1970s, Cutolo had become so powerful that he was able to decide which of his followers would be moved to which jails, use a prison governor's telephone to make calls anywhere in the world, and allegedly even slap the prison governor on one occasion for daring to search his cell. Another key bond Cutolo created was regular payments to the families of NCO members sent to prison, thereby guaranteeing the allegiance of both prisoners and their families.
Cutolo was soon able to gather under him a small group of prisoners, the nucleus of which would later become the leadership of the NCO. They were Antonino Cuomo aka "'o Maranghiello" (The Cudgel), Pasquale Barra aka "'o Nimale" (The Animal), Giuseppe Puca aka "'o Giappone" (The Japanese), Pasquale D'Amico aka "'o Cartunaro" (The Cardboard picker) and Vincenzo Casillo aka "'o Nirone" (The Big Black). After being released, they would set up the first criminal activities on the outside which would be directly controlled by Cutolo from within the penitentiary system.
Structure
The NCO developed two parallel structures, one inside the penitentiary system called "cielo coperto" (covered sky), and the other outside the penitentiary system called "cielo scoperto" (clear sky). Since Cutolo and many NCO members were serving life sentences, communication between these two structures were of utmost importance. To retain his leadership, Cutolo needed to relay his orders to NCO members outside in an effective and reliable way, while simultaneously insuring that some of the profits generated by the expansion be delivered to prisons so that he could expand his recruitment drive.
The peculiar conditions at Poggioreale prison which included its strategic location in the centre of Naples Western District and continuous flow of people such as parole violators and relatives of prisoners, to and from the prison made it possible for the NCO to successfully coordinate criminal activities from their centralized location. The NCO used this continuous flow to bring money and goods to prison and to send directives to their associates for outside operations. The relatives who could visit daily were being used as primary couriers, but when they were unavailable, some of these associates would be certified on paper as kin through the courtesy of obliging clerks from various municipalities in the area, especially Cutolo's municipality in Ottaviano.
As the Justice Department discovered in 1983, Cutolo was visited daily from July 1977 to December 1978 by Giuseppe Puca who had a document from Ottaviano's municipality certifying him to be Cutolo's first cousin. He had also received three visits from another NCO member, Giuseppe Romano, one as Cutolo's brother-in-law, one as compare and finally as first cousin. The NCO became the organizing principle of a new kinship system based on Comparaggio, first cousins and allied kin, which was formally written into the municipal registry by obliging local bureaucrats.
Once the first NCO group became operative and started generating profits, Cutolo established the soccorso verde (green cross) to help the NCO recruit new members from the prison population, providing them with clothes, lawyers, legal advice, money for themselves and their families, and even luxury items. There was a regular procedure for this financial allocation to prisoners. From the very beginning, Cutolo had his men set aside 500,000 lire from each successful operation in a fund for the prison population. This fund was distributed to inmates belonging to the NCO all over Italy through wire service by Raffaele's sister Rosetta Cutolo and some NCO lieutenants.
In an attempt to control the entire region, the NCO surpassed the family structure of the urban Camorra. The NCO was an open structure with new members incorporated at a rate of 1,000 per year. Membership was open to everyone, the primary requisites being swearing loyalty to Cutolo and contributing to the common criminal activities. However, as soon as the organization's business expanded and there was a need for more manpower, recruitment became more aggressive and later, even mandatory. In prison, people were forced to become members of the NCO. Failure to do so would often result in the murder of the unwilling prisoner.
The organization was a federation of different gangs, with their own territorial areas of action, but hierarchically ordered and tightly controlled by Raffaele Cutolo. A document found on pentito, Pasquale D'Amico, described the organization as a "Door-to-door sales business, specializing in underwear and lingerie". Cutolo was the CEO. There was a vice-chief executive at large (Vincenzo Casillo replacing Cutolo for emergency decisions, since Cutolo's reaction time was delayed by his imprisonment), an executive board (on which sat the members of the original group), then area managers, branch managers, and finally, salesmen in charge of collecting the weekly money from their rackets. Outside of prison, there was an executive meeting every fifteen days, where Rosetta Cutolo, who as the boss's sister, could easily communicate with him in prison.
Ideology Cutolo had an ideology, another factor that appealed to rootless and badly educated youths. He founded the NCO in his home town Ottaviano on 24 October 1970, the day of Cutolo's patron saint, San Raffaele, and the organization used a statute of rules and regulations that were deliberately meant to have a striking resemblance to the Camorra of the last century. In such a way, Cutolo created the most powerful organization ever to exist in the Neapolitan hinterland. Using his personal appeal and almost magic charisma, he was able to achieve this single-handedly.
The NCO strongholds were the towns to the east of Naples, such as Ottaviano. From its start, the NCO advocated using illegal resources available in the territory for the betterment of the community, claimed the role of protector of the community and assumed a strong regional identity based on criminal values. He accused the Sicilian Mafia of wanting to colonize Naples and the Campania. Cutolo appealed to a Campanian rather than Neapolitan sense of identity, perhaps as a result of his poor peasant background.
For instance, Cutolo is once reported as having said: "The day when the people of Campania understand that it is better to eat a slice of bread as a free man than to eat a steak as a slave is the day when Campania will win." He talked about the need to re-establish respect for the people of this region: "We have to renew the ancient splendors of Naples and the Campania. We have to give back its destiny to our region, represented by the symbol of Vesuvio."