Usury: when ‘credit’ is black (2010)

In a difficult socio-economic context, such as the present one, the phenomenon of usury constitutes one of the indicators of the “suffering” of the Italian families and businesses. This phenomenon is only partly quantifiable on the basis of the judicial verification of the complaints, as is shown by the substantial difference between the number of the latter and that of the number of requests for assistance and help addressed to the privileged observers, such as the Anti-usury Foundations or the same trade associations. This difference, which is mainly due to the reduced propensity of families and businesses to report cases of usury to the judicial authorities, leads us to consider to focus on the level of permeability of a territory and the vulnerability of the various social and economic contexts with respect to the phenomenon of usury, rather than just sticking to the official data concerning the number of reports.
Eurispes has formulated an Index of Usury Risk (IRU) along these lines, based on the analysis of those socio-economic variables that are considered to influence the degree of vulnerability and/or permeability of a territory with respect to usury: economic framework, banking system, entrepreneurial fabric, criminality.