Two famous Rome restaurants near the iconic ancient Roman Pantheon were seized Thursday in the latest operation targeting assets linked to Italy's richest and most dangerous criminal organisation, Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia.
Anti-mafia investigators seized control of the eateries a short walk from Emperor Augustus' temple to all the gods as part of an operation in which around 10 million euros in assets were confiscated. The restaurants, 'Er Faciolaro' and 'La Rotonda', are popular with tourists. Both were controlled by a 47-year-old businessman from the southern region of Calabria, Salvatore Lania, who was placed under house arrest on suspicion of fake registration of asset ownership as part of the operation.
"The rents are so dear around here only the mafia can afford them," a local merchant told ANSA.
"Leases change hands all the time, with various people stepping in, but we all know who's behind them," he added. Eight other people related to Lania or who work for him are also under investigation in the probe.
In addition to the two restaurants police also seized a souvenir shop in the Pantheon area and dummy companies assigned to relatives or employees.
Lania's name first emerged during investigations into 'Ndrangheta infiltration in the capital that led to the seizure and confiscation of the storied Dolce Vita-era Café de Paris in Via Veneto in November 2008.
Specifically investigators uncovered alleged relations between Lania and associates of the crime syndicate involved in contraband activities between China and the Czech Republic via the Calabrian container port of Gioia Tauro.
Thursday's was the latest in a string of high-profile operations against 'Ndrangheta.
In January Italian police arrested more than 160 people in the biggest-ever operation against a northern business arm of the Calabrian mafia.
The op showed how far the one-time southern kidnapping gangs - once, and for a long time, 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".
"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.
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 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.
January's op was the biggest against the Calabrian Mob since a major Italian-FBI bust in February 2014 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 replacement for Oppedisano is not yet 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 such as the eateries around the Pantheon, which 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.
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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