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man all the money she had in the house and now she has no money to make thecontribution” (Transcript of a telephone intercept, criminal proceeding - Turin,2001). To face the risk of a liquidity crisis they look for new contributors amongstthe women that have finished paying the debt, so as to involve them in the network:“A: «Do you want to take part in ‘osusu’ again?»B: «No Mummy, want to help my parents... I can’t participate in ‘osusu’ now!»A: «Look it will start on the 10 th »B: «O.k., Mummy, but I can’t…»A: «You can’t have a million?»B: «No Mummy, I have to pay for the ‘Joint’ and there are other problems…»A: «O.k., you came to pay for the ‘Joint’ in Europe, when you paid madam youmanaged to earn money for her and now you must earn it for yourself youcan’t…»” (Preventive detention order, criminal proceeding - Naples, 1999).It is not clear who takes care of this amount of money and whether part of thesum is given to other people in the organisation who reside in Nigeria. In the samecriminal proceeding mentioned above, it is thought that “the sums of participationin osusu are given in trust, clearly to another member of the society who takes careof the collection and subsequent distribution and who, obviously, enjoys a certain‘respect’ ”.Sending money to Nigeria and its legal use at homeConsidering that part of the organisation resides in Nigeria and that, however,Nigeria is the start of the traffic of women for sexual exploitation it is obvious thatpart of the accumulated money is sent to Nigeria.The systems to send money to Nigeria are many. The first is surely thoseagencies of money transfer, the organisation that permits sending money to allcountries of the world 65 in a simple and rapid manner.The rapidity is because of the existence of a pyramid structure: the company ofmoney transfer has a limited number of accredited agents in each country whohowever, on their part, have a very wide network of non-professional sub-agentsand sub-senders (one only has to think of the number of money transfer points thatare to be found in commercial places of another type, such as food shops, phonecentres, hairdressers, etc...).The simplicity is, on the other hand, given by operating procedures: the clientgoes to the sales point with a sum of money in cash 66 (for a maximum amountwhich until 2001 was 20 million lira) and fills in a form where personal details ofthe sender and the beneficiary are requested, the amount of the transfer and the65It is sufficient to note that Western Union is present in more than 186 countries and in 2001 had about90,000 sales points.66The principal circuits (Western Union and Money Gram) accept only cash because the transfer is sorapid they could not assume the risk of accepting cheques.