(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-14 14:34

Confindustria, the industrialists' lobby, has also boosted the movement with a threat to expel members who pay protection money. Its Sicilian branch has gone through a list of pizzo-paying companies found in a raid on a top Mafia boss' hideout, and this month began summoning heads of those companies to demand to know if they indeed had been paying and should be drummed out of the politically influential lobby.

In one case, the director of a private clinic said her institution wound up on Cosa Nostra's list because a mobster was treated there, although it apparently was unclear during his hospitalization that he was a Mafioso.

At the same time, authorities are ratcheting up the pressure on business owners, aggressively prosecuting those who refuse to testify against the Mafia in clear-cut cases of extortion. Under Italian law, a businessman who denies paying up despite flagrant evidence -- such as being caught on a surveillance tape -- can be charged with "aiding and abetting" Cosa Nostra.

"Now it is a bigger risk for us to pay than not to pay," said Ugo Argiroffi, an engineer who recently added his Palermo construction company, C.O.C.I. to Addiopizzo's list (http://www.addiopizzo.org in Italian with an English link).

While the nearly 230 businesses on the list are only a fraction of Palermo's thousands of stores, offices and factories, a similar group has sprouted up in Catania, Sicily's second-largest city.

Perhaps most significant, the rebellion has taken root in strongholds of the most ruthless Mafia clans -- places such as Gela, a drab, industrial coastal town. Some 80 Gela businessmen in recent months have denounced extortion attempts.

It is a dramatic turn since the early '90s, when a Gela merchant who denounced extortion was slain by the Mafia, and a Gela car dealer, whose showroom was repeatedly torched, had to move his family and change his name after he testified in court.

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