Calabrian sweep nets 79 alleged mobsters

Premier Giorgia Meloni in Tuesday

hailed the latest Italian police operation against 'Ndrangheta

in which 79 alleged mobsters were arrested for alleged extortion

and drug offences in their native Calabria.

"The Reggio Calabria District Anti-Mafia Directorate dealt a

devastating blow to the 'Ndrangheta, deploying over 500 State

Police and Carabinieri officers in a major operation that led to

the arrest of 79 people, damaging the interests of the mafia,"

she said on X.

"Thanks to those who defend the rule of law with courage and

professionalism every day.

"The State will not yield.

"The fight against the mafia is and will continue to be an

absolute priority for the Government."

In the operation against Italy's richest and most powerful

organised crime outfit, some 79 people were arrested, 73 of whom

were taken to prison and six placed under house arrest.

The operation in Reggio Calabria targetted the 'Ndrangheta clans

of De Stefano, Tegano, and Condello.

The suspects are charged with various offences of mafia-type

criminal association, drug trafficking, extortion, robbery, and

illegal possession and carrying of firearms.

The investigations are said to have shed light on the clans'

economic interests, from drug trafficking to extortion against

merchants and entrepreneurs.

The 'Ndrangheta is widely considered to have become Italy's most

powerful organized-crime syndicate, outstripping Sicily's Cosa

Nostra, thanks to its control over much of the cocaine that

arrives in Europe, and its reach has stretched outside its base

in the southern region of Calabria and gone beyond the country's

borders.

Experts say its activities are worth the equivalent of 3% of

Italy's GDP, or some 60 billion euros a year.

Its bosses hunker down in bunkers but manage to run rackets that

span the globe.

The Mob holds Calabria itself in a vice-like grip and many parts

of the southern region are no-go areas for police.

It has a pervasive influence on all walks of life, although

tourists to the region's many resorts and Ancient Greek

settlement ruins may be forgiven for thinking it barely exists,

so subterranean is its network.

The main 'Ndrangheta offshoots abroad are in North and South

America, especially Canada, and Australia.

The group had graduated from being cattle thieves and kidnappers

in the Calabrian highlands to operating perhaps the world's most

lucrative criminal enterprises.

A massive 2010 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 still 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 abductions in the rugged

Aspromonte area.

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, the 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 a small Calabrian coastal town, San

Luca, in 1991.

A string of 'Ndrangheta-linked businesses have been seized in

the last few years all over Italy, and especially in the

affluent Lombard belt around Milan.

Ten years ago a former Dolce Vita-era bar and restaurant on

Rome's storied Via Veneto, the Caffe' De Paris, turned out to be

in the hands of the Calabrian Mob.

But those are reputed to be just the tip of the iceberg of

'Ndrangheta holdings.

photo: Meloni pays homage to site of 1992 Cosa Nostra bombing

that killed anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone outside

Palermo Monday

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