Italian police on Wednesday
arrested more than 160 people in the biggest-ever operation
against a northern business arm of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta
mafia, Italy's richest and most dangerous criminal organisation.
The op showed how far the one-time southern kidnapping
gangs - long poor relations to Sicily's Cosa Nostra but now
grown plump on cocaine cash - had infiltrated the economy of
Italy's most affluent regions, especially the thriving economy
of Reggio Emilia around Bologna.
National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Prosecutor Franco Roberti
said the Bologna-based operation was "historic and
unprecedented".
It was "imposing and decisive in the fight against the
mafia in the north," he said.
"I can't recall an intervention of this type to combat a
strong and monolithic criminal organisation, deeply infiltrated
(in the northern economy)", Roberti said.
As well as economic crimes and attempted bribery of
politicians, those arrested were charged with mafia offences
ranging from racketeering to weapons possession, and some 100
million euros in assets were seized.
Among other things, two of the alleged mafia members were
captured in a wiretap laughing at a deadly Italian earthquake
and planning how to take advantage of reconstruction contracts.
Prosecutors said the conversation between suspected
'Ndrangheta members Gaetano Blasco and Antonio Valerio caught
them laughing at the 2012 disaster in Emilia Romagna.
They joked about building collapses and how they would be
able to take advantage of construction work in the conversation
that dates from May 29, 2012 - the second day of disastrous
tremors in the region that ultimately killed 12.
Among those arrested Wednesday was Giuseppe Iaquinta, the
building-contractor father of 2006 World Cup-winning striker
Vincenzo Iaquinta.
One of those probed was the driver of the Reggio Emilia
police chief. The man is suspected of tipping off clans.
The prosecutor who led the probe said the group had its
epicenter in Reggio Emilia and was primarily focused on
business, unlike 'Ndrangheta groups in other northern regions
that still cling to core Mob activities - while trying to get
into big events like Expo Milan 2015, where their attempts were
thwarted.
"In Emilia we don't have clans like in Lombardy or
Piedmont, but rather the presence of an organization purely
entrepreneurial in content," said Bologna prosecutor Roberto
Alfonso.
Alfonso said the group had its origins on June 9, 1982,
when Antonino Dragone arrived in Emilia and went on to develop
the group's activities for the next 32 years.
"The association developed, growing like a metastasis in a
healthy body," Alfonso said.
Businessmen, public administrators, public safety
officials, and a journalist were among the almost 170 arrested
after investigations revealed the group's primary mafia-related
business activities were in the building and construction
sector.
Alfonso said Marco Gibertini, a journalist arrested as an
accomplice to the organization, gave TV and print media space to
members of the group, allowing them interviews and public
declarations, and also connected members of the group with
politicians and businesspeople he knew.
Meanwhile, back home down south, "via a number of
professionals", the Cutro clan showed it had contact with top
judicial and ecclesiastical circles," said Catanzaro prosecutor
Vincenzo Antonio Lombardo.
Wednesday's op was the biggest against the Calabrian Mob
since a major Italian-FBI bust last February which showed that
'Ndrangheta was muscling in on the drug operations of one of
Cosa Nostra's historic five families in New York, the Gambinos.
Before that, in July 2010, a massive 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 replaceent for
Oppedisano is not known.
RICHEST AND MOST IMPENETRABLE.
'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
growing fat on the transatlantic heroin trade through operations
like the infamous 'French connection', 'Ndrangheta was only just
emerging from its traditional stock-in-trade of kidnappings in
the Calabrian highlands.
It has since become a highly sophisticated global network
with a chokehold on the European cocaine trade and control over
swathes of its home turf where police fear to tread, Italian
officials say.
As well as being the richest, 'Ndrangheta is also regarded
as the most impenetrable of Italy's mafias, with its close-knit
family-based organisation outdoing the Sicilian mafia in its
ability to defeat police efforts to turn members into State
witnesses.
The European law enforcement agency Europol has identified
the 'Ndrangheta mafia 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, 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 1991.
A string of 'Ndrangheta-linked businesses have been seized
in the last few years all over northern Italy, and especially in
the affluent Lombard belt around Milan, and a Lombardy regional
councillor was placed under investigation for buying votes from
transplanted clans.
On the Italian Riviera, the town councils of Bordighera and
Ventimiglia were dissolved for 'Ndrangheta infiltration in 2011
and 2012, the first non-Calabrian municipalities to be wound up
because of such penetration.
In Rome, the Calabrian Mob has laundered money in a string
of plum properties, as attested to by recent seizures police
say are only the tip of the iceberg.
In November 2013 Grand Hotel Gianicolo, a former monastery
converted into a four-star hotel for the Catholic Church's
Jubilee in 2000, was seized from Calabrian businessmen linked to
the 'Ndrangheta.
It is one of the swankiest properties on the hill,
Gianicolo or Janiculum, that affords one of the most
breathtaking views over Rome.
Six years ago a former Dolce Vita-era bar and restaurant
on the storied Via Veneto, the Caffe' De Paris, turned out to be
in the hands of the Calabrian Mob.
More recently, leftwing cooperatives involved in a
hitherto-unknown Rome mafia organisation that allegedly had
fingers in a web of business and political operations were said
to have links to 'Ndrangheta.
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