Italian police on Tuesday
arrested 19 people linked to suspected drug trafficking between
South America and Italy run by the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta
mafia.
A Roman broker, Mauro De Bernardis, was said to be the
ringleader of the gang that allegedly brought cocaine to Italy
hidden inside the catering containers of airlines.
The coke was headed for the Italian capital, police said.
'Ndrangheta, Italy's richest and most powerful mafia,
controls the European cocaine trade.
'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 kidnappings in
the Calabrian highlands.
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