The Di Lauro-Prestieri clan, in control of coke, in control of local government politics, becomes more and more prosperous and finds new areas for investment: starting with China, where it enters the counterfeit market for investments in finance. There was the problem of managing the money, recycling it, investing it. ‘Enzo, one of Paolo Di Lauro’s sons, had a way with computers and could move money from one place to another in no time. And I was surprised once at a meeting of ours, when they talked about buying a packet of Microsoft shares. They had a man in Switzerland, Pietro Virgilio, who acted as their collector with the banks. Without Swiss banks we wouldn’t have existed.’

But the fact is that the clan’s rise is actually the cause of its fall. Everything seems to change when national attention is turned on them, and that happens because the clan is now travelling more and more, between Switzerland, Spain and Ukraine, and Di Lauro delegates everything to his sons. The latter take away the autonomy granted to the local bosses, whom their father had regarded as independent operators. The sons do away with the local boss’s capital and decision-making authority and place them on salary. Things fall apart. A fierce war breaks out, a bloodbath in which there are as many as four killings per day. ‘I always say it: we shouldn’t have been VIPs, but VILPs.’ VILP? What’s that? I ask. ‘Yeah, the L stands for Local.’ Very Important Local Person! The important thing is to be important only in that territory:

The most serious harm you journalists did by writing about the Camorra was giving them too much attention. That’s the problem. If you’re a VILP in Scampia, you can shoot, sell cocaine, scare people, own a trendy bar, have women look at you because you’re intimidating: in short, you’re a big shot. But if you shine the spotlight of all of Italy on me, the national notoriety is likely to cause the local reputation to crack, because for Italy I’m a criminal and that’s that. Attention exposes me, it says I’m a violent thug, a guy who conducts dirty business; even magistrates and the police are forced to take swift action, and there are no bribes to protect you anymore.

Although Prestieri decided to cooperate, he does not speak of himself as a pentito, literally someone who repents, but as a soldier who betrayed his army. ‘No, I’m not repentant, it would be too easy to use that to erase what I’ve done. Today I’m just a dirty uniform of the Camorra.’ Nevertheless he feels the weight of what he did: