For years government agents and cigarette smugglers have been playing cat and mouse in Naples harbour in a brisk and friendly war that no one really wants to end
Late one night in 1977, eight powerboats raced into Torre' Annunziata harbour out of Naples and fanned out to prearranged points at the quayside. Feverishly each skipper and his two-man crew began to unload the cardboard crates crammed into into every available space of the sleek racing craft. Scores of young men on the waterfront started passing the ten-kilo cases car filled up, The driver roared away, and soon the empty boats were again heading out to sea.
During those few minutes, eight ons of contraband cigarettes with a black market value of around half a million dollars, were whisked away to secret hiding places in Naples and the surrounding hills . And by the next day an army of pedlars throughout the city was eking out a living by selling the smuggled cigarettes.
Over the past decade , Naples has become the centre of the biggest cigarette and drug smuggling industry in Europe. Backed by advanced technology, heavy investments and a 10,000-strong labour force, the trade currently crosses more than a million dollars . All told , an estimated 18 thousand million contraband cigarettes and other illegal goods - one in five are now sold annually in Italy ,and may be only a question of time before exporting begins to neighbouring France , Switzerland and Austria . " We have two parallel cigarette and other illegal goods market ," a senior Italian police officer said. " The official one administered by the government in Rome, and the clandestine one administered in Naples by a government all its own " .
Why Naples ? Because it is a big convenient port and becuse the Neapolitans have over the centuries become such master smugglers that the contraband trade is sometimes referred to in Italy as " the Neapolitan art " . The Sicilian Mafia is reputedly the main financial power behind the business, but the actual operators are Neapolitans. " Between us and Mafia , it's like oil and water ," said one operator . " We stay out of each other's way as much as possible . But they do their job and we do ours "
Currently in a city of about 2 million, unemployment in Naples runs at 2,25,000 - perhaps a third of the labour force. One 20-year-old summed up his reasons for joining the smugglers : " I had no job and I didn't want to steal , "
It was an astonishing fact how open the whole thing seemed. 300-odd contraband vessels lay mooted in plain view at half a doen Neapolitan marinas . All the boats were identical in size and paintwork .
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