ITALIAN police yesterday made more than 300 arrests in their largest operation for 15 years against the country’s most powerful mafia.
About 3000 police made arrests in southern Calabria and in several parts of the wealthy north for mafia association, murder, arms offences, trafficking, extortion and other crimes in a crackdown on the ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
The man believed to be the ‘Ndrangheta’s top boss, Domenico Oppedisano, was picked up earlier in the day in Rosarno, a small coastal town in Calabria, where the organisation is based.
Also arrested was the man in charge of the gang’s businesses in the Milan area of Lombardy, along with 160 others, including businessmen and the director of state medical services in the city of Pavia. The ‘Ndrangheta has been making major inroads in Milan, which is now its economic centre. Police seized tens of millions of euros worth of assets, arms and drugs.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said the sweep struck at the heart of the ‘Ndrangheta in terms of both its organisation and of its finances. That most of the arrests were in the north, aimed at the group’s commercial interests, “confirm that northern Italy is the true theatre of operations for the ‘Ndrangheta,” anti-mafia prosecutor Alberto Cisterna said.
Healthcare “is the sector they prefer, since it allows them to establish contacts with politics and with public administration,” Mr Cisterna said.
The operation, the largest against the ‘Ndrangheta since 1995, comes after an internal war during which the northern branches tried – and failed – to secede from the southern base.
Northern clans realised they were “the financial and political heart of the organisation,” Mr Cisterna said, but the ‘Ndrangheta wanted to “maintain rites and management in Calabria . . . all of the bosses are from there”.
The clan war spread to Germany in 2007, when six Italians were gunned down by a rival gang in retribution for an earlier killing as they left a birthday celebration in the western city of Duisburg.
In recent decades, the ‘Ndrangheta has become the largest and most feared of Italy’s four large organised crime syndicates, which include the Camorra in the area of Naples, Cosa Nostra in Sicily and the smaller Sacra Corona Unita in the southeastern region of Puglia.
Italy’s Eurispes institute estimated the ‘Ndrangheta’s turnover from trafficking in drugs and arms, prostitution and extortion at E44 billion ($63bn).
In a separate operation on Monday, police seized goods worth E1.3bn in two operations against the ‘Ndrangheta and the Camorra. The operation targeting the ‘Ndrangheta brought police to seize property worth E330 million belonging to businessman Gioacchino Campolo, known as the “poker king”.
Police also seized businesses, tourist complexes, apartments and land worth about E1bn in an operation against the Casalesi clan, one of the most powerful Camorra clans.
Prosecutors say wiretaps are key to investigating hard-to-infiltrate mafia clans, and they have complained bitterly against a proposed bill that aims to limit the use of electronic eavesdropping. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is pushing the measures through parliament.
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