Italian PM hails Ndrangheta operation
Baku, July 14, AZERTAC
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday hailed the latest Italian police operation against “Ndrangheta” in which 79 alleged mobsters were arrested for alleged extortion and drug offences in their native Calabria, ANSA reported.
"The Reggio Calabria District Anti-Mafia Directorate dealt a devastating blow to the 'Ndrangheta, deploying over 500 State Police and Carabinieri officers in a major operation that led to the arrest of 79 people, damaging the interests of the mafia," she said on X.
"Thanks to those who defend the rule of law with courage and professionalism every day.
"The State will not yield.
"The fight against the mafia is and will continue to be an absolute priority for the Government." In the operation against Italy's richest and most powerful organized crime outfit, some 79 people were arrested, 73 of whom were taken to prison and six placed under house arrest.
The operation in Reggio Calabria targeted the “Ndrangheta” clans of De Stefano, Tegano, and Condello.
The suspects are charged with various offences of mafia-type criminal association, drug trafficking, extortion, robbery, and illegal possession and carrying of firearms.
The investigations are said to have shed light on the clans' economic interests, from drug trafficking to extortion against merchants and entrepreneurs.
The “Ndrangheta” is widely considered to have become Italy's most powerful organized-crime syndicate, outstripping Sicily's Cosa Nostra, thanks to its control over much of the cocaine that arrives in Europe, and its reach has stretched outside its base in the southern region of Calabria and gone beyond the country's borders.
Experts say its activities are worth the equivalent of 3% of Italy's GDP, or some 60 billion euros a year.
Its bosses hunker down in bunkers but manage to run rackets that span the globe.
The Mob holds Calabria itself in a vice-like grip and many parts of the southern region are no-go areas for police.
It has a pervasive influence on all walks of life, although tourists to the region's many resorts and Ancient Greek settlement ruins may be forgiven for thinking it barely exists, so subterranean is its network.
The main “Ndrangheta” offshoots abroad are in North and South America, especially Canada, and Australia.
The group had graduated from being cattle thieves and kidnappers in the Calabrian highlands to operating perhaps the world's most lucrative criminal enterprises.
A massive 2010 police operation netted the head of the “Ndrangheta” and 300 others.
Domenico Oppedisano, 80, anointed the equivalent of the 'boss of bosses' in Cosa Nostra at a Calabrian shrine to the Madonna a year previously, was caught along with their reputed head in Lombardy, Pino Neri.
“Ndrangheta” is so secretive that the replacement for Oppedisano is still not known.
“Ndrangheta” (from a Greek word meaning 'heroism' or 'virtue') once lived in the twin shadow of Cosa Nostra in Sicily and the Camorra in Naples.
While those two syndicates, notably the Sicilians, were feeding off the transatlantic heroin trade through operations like the infamous 'French connection', 'Ndrangheta was only just emerging from its traditional stock-in-trade of abductions in the rugged Aspromonte area.
The European law enforcement agency Europol has identified 'Ndrangheta as one of the "most threatening" organized crime groups on the global level, due to its "enormous financial might" and "immense corruptive power," with a presence in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, the US, Colombia and Australia, where 'Ndrangheta turf wars have gained headlines.
In Europe, 'Ndrangheta really only came into the public eye in 2007, when six clan members were gunned down on the midsummer Ferragosto holiday in the German city of Duisburg in a feud that began as a wedding spat in a small Calabrian coastal town, San Luca, in 1991.
A string of Ndrangheta-linked businesses have been seized in the last few years all over Italy, and especially in the affluent Lombard belt around Milan.
Ten years ago a former Dolce Vita-era bar and restaurant on Rome's storied Via Veneto, the Caffe' De Paris, turned out to be in the hands of the Calabrian Mob.
But those are reputed to be just the tip of the iceberg of “Ndrangheta” holdings.
Other news in this section
