The water and gas had been shut off for days when Lessena M and his flatmates, a group of asylum seekers from Ivory Coast who have been living in Naples for more than a year, decided to stage a protest.

They began throwing rubbish bins and an old orange sofa over the balcony of their flat while neighbours gathered in the street to watch. Then the police arrived, seemingly dismayed that the owner of the flat had not yet turned the water back on. Without working plumbing, the stench in the property had become intolerable. Lessena, 34, said even the boy who brought them their food every day in a plastic pouch – always pasta – had stopped coming.

“We were totally abandoned. At that point, we were totally alone,” he said. Soft-spoken Lessena, who survived an acid attack in Ivory Coast that scarred his left shoulder and neck, said he had been to the police several times to file formal complaints, because the owners of his building, who are being paid by the Italian state to house asylum seekers, were not reachable.

Within days of the protest, which was captured last month in a film for the Guardian by Italian journalists, the asylum seekers were moved.

Lessena is one of an estimated 99,000 migrants being hosted in Italy this year at a cost of about €1.16bn, double what it cost last year. The job of taking care of them has largely been outsourced to charities, individuals, companies and cooperatives across Italy. While many are housed in huge reception centres, such as Europe’s largest in Mineo, Sicily, others are sent to smaller properties, where landlords, hotel managers and restaurant proprietors have turned their available space into housing. It is a lucrative business: owners of shelters for asylum seekers are paid €35 a day for every adult they house. A person running a shelter receives €1.28m if they house 100 people for a year.

On paper, asylum seekers are legally entitled to certain benefits to help them stay safe and healthy and even assimilate into Italian society: food and medical attention, psychological support and €2.50 per day. Rightwing politicians, led by the Northern League’s Matteo Salvini, habitually portray asylum seekers as living cushy lives on the dole.

But for some, the reality is substantially different.

A number of activists working with asylum seekers believe the business of hosting them is riddled with corruption and the influence of organised crime groups, who are taking advantage of a national emergency and profiting from it. The migrants are concentrated in southern Italy, where the influence of organised crime is significant.

The opportunity for illegal profit was sensationally articulated by the man at the centre of the so-called “mafia capitale” corruption scandal in Rome, Salvatore Buzzi, who was recorded last year telling an associate that drugs were “less profitable” than the business of housing asylum seekers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Asylum seekers from Ivory Coast protest against conditions in their refugee shelter in Naples. Photograph: theguardian.com

Gianluca Petruzzo, the president of a rights group called Associazione 3 Febbraio, said Italy was essentially in a state of emergency when it came to housing. When authorities know, for example, that 1,000 migrants are arriving in Sicily, arrangements are usually hastily made to house them, often without putting a bid up for tender.



“In an area north of Naples, you have a restaurant, this is hosting 300 people – one room for 300 people. There are certified hotels where in a room for two or three people they put bunk beds for seven or eight migrants,” Petruzzo said.

In some cases he claims he has personally witnessed, asylum seekers are brought to farms owned by migrant shelter owners to work 12-hour days, usually for about €10 a day.

“The biggest indignation is when you go into the centre and speak to the owners and they will say: ‘what do you want, they’re from Africa. We give them food and water, what else do they want?’ The owners think they are more beasts than humans,” Petruzzo said.

There is a debate about whether the poor living conditions many asylum seekers in Italy face reflect the fact that the country simply cannot cope with the numbers of migrants, or whether Italy has purposely taken a hands-off approach as a way to deter people from staying.

Petruzzo said he did not believe the excruciatingly long wait facing those who had applied for asylum was an accident. While many are supposed to be interviewed by local immigration authorities within 60 days of their arrival, most have to wait six to eight months for their interview, and then another six months before they get their answer. In that period, they are not allowed to work or leave the country.

“It is a long time because the longer they stay, the more Italy gets money from [the] EU, the more shelter owners get from that state, and that goes back to the politicians,” said Petruzzo. “It is a lack of organisation, but also intentional misconduct.”

Lessena’s experience in Italy followed a harrowing journey last year from Libya on a rubber boat that was partially deflated. He said he watched while his friend and his friend’s girlfriend drowned.

He was taken to a building owned by a company that directly and indirectly controls more than two dozen other properties. The asylum seekers allege that they were not given soap and other benefits they are entitled to, as is stipulated under public contracts required of people who house migrants. They also claim their electricity and water were cut off, despite frequent official complaints to police, who Lessena said served as middlemen between the owners and the tenants.

A representative from the company did not respond to requests for comment. The office of the prefect of Naples did not respond to requests for comment, including requests for information that is supposed to be public about how much the firm has been paid by the Italian government.

Back in the Ivory Coast, Lessena said he worked as a graphic designer making T-shirts, a job he would like to take up again so he can earn money and send it home to his family.

He has pain around his neck and shoulder but he has not received medical attention. “When I have my documents, I can enter life again. I can have a moral freedom, I can have an opinion. Because now I don’t know the real life.”