Italian mafia crackdown: police arrest 130 in raids across Europe

Police have arrested more than 130 people in co-ordinated raids in half a dozen European countries as part of a crackdown targeting the Italian ‘Ndrangheta organised crime syndicate, prosecutors and police have said.

The suspects are mostly accused of money-laundering, criminal tax evasion, fraud, drug possession, production and smuggling, mafia-type criminal association and the possession and trafficking of weapons, authorities in Germany said on Wednesday.

Carabinieri officers in Italy made 108 arrests across the country after an investigation based in the southern region of Calabria, the historic base of the ’Ndrangheta, which has overtaken Sicily’s Cosa Nostra as Italy’s most powerful and wealthy mafia and controls the bulk of the cocaine flow into Europe.

A further 15 people were detained on the police orders in the north-western Italian port of Genoa, a man was arrested in the southern Spanish city of Malaga, and about 30 more were held in Germany, where more than 1,000 police searched dozens of homes, offices, and stores in several states.

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Belgian prosecutors said police raided more than 20 addresses as part of the three-year-long investigation, code-named Eureka, which was run by national organised crime squads in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain with the pan-European Eurojust and Europol agencies. Raids also took place in Brazil and Panama.

In Germany, the raids focused on targets in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Thuringia, Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate, whose interior minister, Michael Ebling, claimed had dealt an “effective blow” against organised crime.

“Today sends a very clear signal: there is no place for organised crime in Europe,” Mr Ebling said. Ten people were arrested in Rhineland-Palatinate, four in Bavaria and 15 in North Rhine-Westphalia. Two suspects from Saarland were arrested in Italy.

Police taskforces in each state were supported by special units from the German federal government and other states as well as officers from the customs and tax investigation departments, the DPA news agency reported.

Italian and Belgian authorities said the syndicate was suspected of smuggling nearly 25 tonnes of cocaine from South America to Europe in container ships arriving in Antwerp, Rotterdam and the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro between October 2019 and January 2022.

Bavarian authorities said they had been investigating a woman and seven men, all Italian nationals aged between 25 and 48, since July 2020. The Munich-based group was suspected of involvement in financing cocaine smuggling and money-laundering.

More than €22m in illicit earnings was allegedly funnelled from Calabria to Belgium, the Netherlands and South America. German media said a network of restaurants, pizzerias, cafes and ice cream parlours was suspected of laundering the money.

European authorities have been waging a long-running campaign against the ’Ndrangheta, one of the world’s richest organised crime groups, which has exploited its vast cocaine revenues to extend its reach across Europe and beyond and is believed to operate in more than 40 countries.

Belgian media reported that the trigger for the investigation was the discovery by police in 2019 that the owners of a pizzeria in the town of Genk, who had relatives in Munich, were allegedly in frequent contact with known ‘Ndrangheta cocaine dealers.

The ‘Ndrangheta originates from Calabria, the impoverished southern region at the tip of Italy’s boot. Its name is believed to come from the ancient Greek words “andros” and “agathos”, meaning brave or valiant man.

It expanded substantially from the 1970s onwards, when it reinvested ransom money from kidnappings - one of its main activities at the time - into public work projects and drug trafficking, especially cocaine.

In its latest six-monthly report, Italy’s Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate calls the ‘Ndrangheta “the absolute dominant force in the criminal world” well beyond Calabria. Its strength lies in its capacity to rely on traditional clan and family loyalties while having “maximum flexibility” in exploring new business opportunities in the legal and illegal economy, the report said.

The ‘Ndrangheta is known to have an established presence as far as Canada and Australia, as well as in most of Western Europe, with local cells that usually retain strong links with their Calabrian homeland.

Italian prosecutors and investigators routinely complain that their European counterparts underestimate the extent to which the Calabrian mob has infiltrated their countries, and say all EU nations should copy Italy’s tough anti-mafia laws. - Guardian/Reuters