Kofi Annan warned that organised crime is thriving

The agreement tackling money laundering requires the signatories to improve the regulation of their financial institutions, lift bank secrecy laws and ban anonymous bank accounts.

But the meeting has been overshadowed by reports that the traditional Mafia is again exerting a tight hold in Sicily.

On the eve of the conference a report, leaked from the prosecutor's office in the island, detailed the way the Mafia are infiltrating a new generation of business and political leaders.

Backlash

Its onslaught on Italy in the early 1990s, in which top anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were assassinated, sparked a determined backlash from the Italian authorities.

Prosecutor Giovanni Falcone was murdered in 1992

By breaking the Mafia code of silence - omerta - and getting members to turn on their colleagues, the state seemed to have broken the back of the organisation.

Palermo was regarded the capital of the anti-Mafia fightback. The number of murders in the city has fallen in a decade from an average of 240 to less than 10 - most of which were unconnected with Mafia crime.

But, according to the leaked report, far from being smashed the Mafia appears to have rebuilt its networks, with nearly 200 clans operating with more than 5,000 members.

Urgent measures

The UN's introduction of new powers seems more urgent than ever.

Tana de Zulueta, a member of the Italian parliament's anti-Mafia committee, admits there are problems.

"Italy, like all other countries, is ever more enmeshed in an international network of trans-national organised crime," she said.

"The Sicilian and other local Mafiosi (are) linked to other organisations in other countries and therefore harder to beat unless there's better co-operation," she added.