11-mn-euro-asset seizure lands blow to 'Ndrangheta

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 6 - Finance police landed a big blow to the 'Ndrangheta on Thursday, confiscating assets worth around 11 million euros in an operation linked to a probe by anti-mafia investigators in Catanzaro.
    Four people were detained in the operation and a total of 14 people are under investigation.
    The impounded assets include some tourist complexes on the "Costa degli Dei" (Coast of the Gods) in the Calabrian province of Vibo Valentia.
    One of these complexes was allegedly the venue for talks between the 'Ndrangheta and the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra.
    It is suspected that Cosa Nostra wanted the Calabrian-based syndicate to join the bombing campaign it staged in the early 1990s that claimed the lives of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
    The 'Ndrangheta is widely considered to have become Italy's most powerful organized-crime syndicate thanks to its control over much of the cocaine that arrives in Europe and its reach has stretched outside its southern Italian base and gone beyond the country's borders. (ANSA).