This study analyzes the impact of Mafia on the allocation of EU funding. We focus on EU subsidies directed to the 390Sicilian municipalities from 2007 to 2019. We proxy current Mafia activity by confiscated real estate assets from organized crime and instrument it with geographical shifters of land value. We show that the presence of Mafia increments the amount of EU funds and the number of EU projects assigned to municipalities. We repeat the analysis across different types of investments. A series of robustness checks confirms the reliability of our baseline results
