Italian police on Thursday seized some 212 million euros from a Calabrian businessman believed to be linked to two top clans in the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia, Italy's richest and most powerful organised crime group.
They said Domenico Gallo, 65, was suspected of being close to the Piromalli and Zagari-Fazzalari clans.
As well as various financial assets, police seized 13 financial companies, stakes in other firms, 11 pieces of property including farms and factories and a luxury villa, a luxury car and 12 luxury watches.
Informants have told police that Gallo managed to secure a raft of public-works contracts by bringing together mobsters, civil servants and wheeler-dealers over several decades, earning himself the nickname 'Tarmac Billionaire'.
Since 1985, police investigations have listed him as a leading figure in the web of relations between 'Ndrangheta and the local and national political and administrative worlds.
'Ndrangheta is Italy's richest and most powerful mafia thanks to its control of the European cocaine trade.
All its activities have been estimated to be worth the equivalent of at least three per cent of Italian GDP.
Its tentacles have spread from its southern Italian base to central and northern Italy, northern Europe, North and South America and Australia, among other areas.
Its influence is especially strong in the affluent northern Italian regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna, but it has also spread to Lazio and Rome.
The other mafias in Italy are Cosa Nostra, and the Camorra in Campania.
There is a smaller mafia in Puglia, the Sacra Corona Unita (United Holy Crown, SCU), which is generally considered less dangerous and expansive.
The biggest ever trial into 'Ndrangheta started in Lamezia Terme in mid-January.
The trial delves into the activities of the 'Ndrangheta clans in Vibo Valentia and their links to the political, institutional, economic and rogue Masonic worlds controlling all aspects of local life in Calabria.
It is the biggest mafia trial in Italy since the so-called 'maxi-trial' of Cosa Nostra in Sicily from 1986 to 1992.
The trial, which is expected to last around three years, has over 300 defendants who are facing hundreds if charges.
The defendants include local politicians, businessmen, police and other institutional figures accused of helping 'Ndrangheta hold sway over Calabrian life.
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