That is an extremely small number of intermediaries for any market, let alone the largest fish market in a maritime country. The commission noted "the absence of any initiative, not only on the part of direct producers [fishermen] but also cooperatives of producers as well as wholesale dealers" and cook it as evidence of a "gravely abnormal situation" (CPM-RMI: 96). The four middlemen together constituted an oligopoly, or rather, if we take into account the distribution of trade among them in 1964 (see Table 3), a duopoly: as much as 55 percent of the total value of trade was controlled by just one of the mandatari alone; another accounted for 32 percent, and, well behind, the other two had 8.5 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively (CPM-RMI: 95-96).

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 534