A mafia drug trafficker on the run for 20 years has been captured by Interpol agents in Venezuela, authorities said Monday. Vito Genco was part of a Piedmont bust that netted 5,497 kilos of cocaine in 1994, a European record at the time, which ultimately spelled the undoing of his clan, the infamous Cuntrera-Caruana family of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Dubbed 'The Rothschilds of the Mafia', the Cuntrera-Caruana clan was key to the Mafia's illicit drug trade and money laundering in the 1980s and 90s, with operations as far afield as Canada and Venezuela. Genco, a Calabrian, went missing in 1995 after a court acquitted him and released him from prison. However new evidence was brought forth on appeal that proved his role in trafficking 11 tons of cocaine from Colombia to Italy in March 1994, over five tons of which were intercepted by police. Interpol tracked him down using his car's GPS system. Agents said locals knew him as "the professor". Once extradited, he now faces 19 years behind bars. Police did not mention links to the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia, which now outdoes the Cosa Nostra as Europe's main trafficker of cocaine.
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