Italian police on Tuesday
arrested 18 people on suspicion of tax fraud linked to a chapter
of the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia which has been bedded
down in Lombardy for many years.
The arrests were made by some 300 tax police in Lombardy,
Piedmont, Lazio, Val d'Aosta and Calabria.
Police seized some 32 million euros in assets.
The tax fraud amounted to over 160 million euros, police
said.
In a wiretap in the probe, police overheard one of the bosses
saying the gang could make some four million euros a year from
waste trafficking and disposal.
'Ndrangheta, Italy's richest and most powerful mafia thanks
to its congtrol of the South America-Europe cocaine trade, has
long expanded beyond its Calabrian roots to the rest of Italy
and most of the rest of the world.
Italian police have gradually been digging behind the wall
of silence or omerta' that for 'Ndrangheta is even more
impenetrable than that of Sicily's Cosa Nostra.
In January 2015 police arrested more than 160 people in the
biggest-ever operation against a northern business arm of
'Ndrangheta.
The op showed how far the one-time southern kidnapping
gangs - long 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.
Other probes have shown 'Ndrangheta infiltration in the
region around Milan, Lombardy, the region around Genoa, Liguria,
and the region around Turin, Piedmont.
In February 2014 a major Italian-FBI bust 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 known.
'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
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 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.
Nine years ago a former Dolce Vita-era bar and restaurant
on the storied Via Veneto, the Caffe' De Paris, turned out to be
in the hands of the Calabrian Mob.
More recently, gangsters involved in a hitherto-unknown Rome
crime organisation that allegedly had fingers in a web of
business and political operations were said to have links to
other mafias including 'Ndrangheta.
Cosa Nostra, meanwhile, had been reorganising under a new
cupola formed since the death in prison of Totò 'the Beast'
Riina, the man responsible for the 1992 murders of crusading
anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
But a recent police operation dismantled the new power
structure, police said.
On January 22 police in Sicily acted to execute warrants
issued by anti-mafia prosecutors for the detention of seven
people accused of being members of the reconstituted cupola of
Cosa Nostra bosses.
The attempt to reform the Sicilian Mafia's commission of
leading mobsters was discovered in December when 47 people were
held in a previous operation.
Among the suspects detained on Tuesday were Leandro Greco,
the grandson of Cosa Nostra's 'pope' Michele Greco, and Calogero
Lo Piccolo, the son of Salvatore Lo Piccolo, a boss who is
serving a life sentence in jail.
The new operation was launched thanks in part to the
testimony of two new State witnesses.
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