The meeting between the world of mafias and the world of finance is tentative and almost accidental. But when drug trafficking exploded and the mafias became richer than ever before, they found intermediaries in the banking world. The result was a veritable cataclysm: the biggest banking collapse on record.

The mafia invents its own banking system in the financial capital, New York, of all places. At the time of the Great Depression, the underworld discovers interest usury as a business area and launders its money in gambling.

Meanwhile, the financial world establishes a network of tax havens for the super-rich. In the 1950s, the Bretton Woods system still regulated the global financial markets. But criminals and financial jugglers exploit the loopholes in the system ...

The New York mafia is now also operating in the Caribbean. Bankers find new ways to keep money flowing undetected. It is the birth of financial crime. Michele Sindona, banker for the Cosa Nostra and the Vatican, is one of its most feared representatives.