Police swoop on mobsters in coordinated global operation
POLICE have arrested dozens of suspected mobsters in Europe and South America in a huge operation targeting Italy’s notorious ‘Ndrangheta mafia clan.
Around 90 people accused of involvement in drug trafficking, money laundering and violent crime were arrested in raids in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname.
Hundreds of police took part in the operation, seizing 4 tons of cocaine, 120 kilos of ecstasy and 2 million euros (US$2.27 million) in cash from locations including Italian restaurants and ice cream parlors.
The crackdown on the powerful organized crime syndicate based in Calabria, southern Italy, came just a day after police arrested the new boss of a Sicilian mafia.
“Today we have issued a clear message to criminal alliances across Europe, they are not the only ones who can work across borders,” Filippo Spiezia, deputy head of the EU’s judicial agency Eurojust, said in The Hague. He said the “unprecedented and extraordinary result” targeted “dangerous members of the ‘Ndrangheta family deeply involved in drug trafficking and money laundering.”
Italian police said 90 people had been arrested in all countries in the sweep targeting the ‘Ndrangheta and its “projections across South America.”
In Germany, the operation focused on restaurants, offices and apartments, mainly in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria region.
German prosecutors said 47 suspects had been targeted and 65 premises were being searched.
Dutch prosecutors said the investigation began after they noticed money laundering at two Italian restaurants in the southern Netherlands that showed criminal links with Germany and Calabria, home of the ‘Ndrangheta.
Using an often family-based network spread out around Europe, drugs would come into the Dutch port of Rotterdam and the Belgian port of Antwerp before being moved around the continent.
Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said they had also probed ice cream parlors, adding that together with restaurants “the suspicion is that the mafia organization is laundering money through these establishments and they are used as a cover for their criminal organizations.”
He also confirmed that there had been raids in Suriname, a small South American country that was once a Dutch colony.
Dutch NOS television said the ‘Ndrangheta were mainly active in the Netherlands in drug smuggling through the country’s huge flower export market.
The Belgian operations were concentrated on the Limburg area, home to many people of Italian descent who moved there after World War II to work in coal mines, Belgian prosecutors said.
Earlier police arrested new Cosa Nostra boss Settimino Mineo, 80, and dozens of others in Sicily in a major swoop.