It would be unsafe to sugar-coat it: Corsica is a lawless island that is widely known to be plagued by violent crime committed by organised gangsters involved in illegal activities. Vacationing there comes with high risk.
Criminal Gangs, Separatists, and Mafia
Apart from being known as a natural beauty, Corsica is also home to several criminal mafia gangs and a violent separatist movement group known as the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC), a group of primarily uneducated young men who have waged a clandestine war against France since 1977. Their known activities include numerous forms of racketeering and extortion, drug trafficking, money laundering, prostitution, robbery and contract killing.
For decades the group has assassinated political officials, brutally murdered police officers, and targeted French government offices with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and bombs. Typical militant acts by the FLNC are bombings, aggravated assault, armed bank robbery, and extortion through ‘revolutionary taxes,’ and these actions are mostly aimed at public buildings, banks, touristic infrastructure, military buildings and symbols of French control.
