Mafia flourishing as Italian banks tighten loans

The Washington Post reports:

When the bills started piling up and the banks wouldn’t lend, the white-haired art dealer in the elegant tweed jacket said he drove to the outskirts of Rome and knocked on the rusty steel door of a shipping container.

A beefy man named Mauro answered. He wore blue overalls with two big pockets, one stuffed with checks and the other with cash. The wad of bills he handed over, the art dealer recalled, reeked of the man’s cologne and came at 120 percent annual interest.