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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