60 arrested in gangmaster probe, farm hands called 'monkeys' (7)

(ANSA) - Cosenza, June 10 - Italian police on Wednesday arrested 60 people in a gangmaster probe seizing 14 farms in the southern Italian regions of Calabria and Basilicata.
    Police said hundreds of mostly African migrant farm hands were paid a pittance to work 12-hour days by gangmasters who called them "monkeys".
    The farms seized were worth some eight million euros.
    Some 300 finance guards took part in the operation, which ruling centrist Italia Viva Senator Ernesto Magorno said had dealt a "very hard blow" to gangmastering in the Mezzogiorno.
    The commander of the tax police in Cosenza, Colonel Danilo Nastasi, said "we have rubbed out a social scourge".