Hundreds arrested in raids on Italian mafia

Italian police arrested more than 300 people yesterday in the biggest operation against the mafia since a crackdown on Sicily’s Cosa Nostra 30 years ago.

Night-time raids were conducted by 2500 paramilitary police officers, some of them equipped with nightvision goggles, as well as soldiers from the army’s parachute regiment and elite helicopter-borne tactical units.

The co-ordinated raids targeted the feared ’Ndrangheta mafia from Calabria, the southern region that forms the toe of the Italian boot.

Police said they had dismantled a sophisticated criminal web that linked mafiosi with politicians, lawyers, accountants and Freemasons.

In one of the properties that was raided they found a scrap of paper with details of the secret blood oath that new members of the ’Ndrangheta must swear, replete with esoteric references to swords and white horses.

Among the 334 people arrested was a former MP in Silvio Berlusconi’s party and a colonel in the police force, as well as the head of the association of mayors in Calabria. They were charged with crimes ranging from murder and extortion to loan sharking, money laundering and mafia association.

Many of the raids were conducted against ’Ndrangheta clans in and around the town of Vibo Valentia but there were also arrests in other parts of Italy, from Tuscany and Veneto to Piedmont and Lombardy, northern regions where the ’Ndrangheta buys up businesses to launder its criminal earnings.

Arrests were also made in Switzerland, Bulgaria and Germany. Police seized more than 20 weapons, including rifles and sidearms.

Property and assets worth €15 million (NZ$25 million) were confiscated, in what Luciana Lamorgese, the interior minister, described as ‘‘a heavy blow’’ to the ’Ndrangheta.