Italian police on Thursday seized 160
million euros in assets from an 'Ndrangheta-linked businessman
in Reggio Calabria.
They said the man, Carmelo Ficara, had close ties to the
Calabrian mafia.
From the mid 80s to 2017, they said, he relied on these links to
build a construction empire in and around the Calabrian capital.
Among the assets seized were seven companies active in the
building and real estate sector, 99 pieces of property and 16
motor vehicles.
Ficraa was sentenced to 12 years in jail in December for
external association with the Calabrian Mob.
'Ndrangheta has spread from its Calabrian heartlands to the rest
of Italy, Europe and around the world, and is considered Italy's
richest and most powerful mafia due to its control of the
European cocaine trade from South America.
'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.
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
'Ndrangheta 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, USA, 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 a Calabrian coastal town, San Luca,
in 1991.
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