Italy busts mafia-run international drug ring

Italian police said Tuesday they have dismantled an international drug trafficking operation run by a ‘Ndrangheta mafia clan, with over 100 suspects slapped with arrest warrants nationwide.

Six Italians were also arrested in Switzerland as part of the sting, which was the culmination of three separate investigations into the Mole family, police said.

“One of the toughest organisations in Europe has been dismembered,” Reggio Calabria police commissioner Bruno Megale told a press conference, according to Italian media.

The Mole family clan “was not only involved in drug trafficking but imposed the rules of the ‘Ndrangheta in various sectors” of the economy, he said, without specifying.

The suspects — identified in probes in Milan, Florence and Reggio Calabria — are also accused of possessing illegal arms, tax evasion, fraud and extortion, police said.

The ‘Ndrangheta, based in the region that forms the tip of Italy’s boot, has surpassed Sicily’s more famous Cosa Nostra to become Italy’s most powerful mafia group and operates across the world.

It controls the bulk of cocaine flowing into Europe. Over a ton of the drug was seized during various operations in 2019 and 2020 at the ports of Livorno in Tuscany and Gioia Tauro in Calabria, authorities revealed Tuesday.

– Divers to recover drugs –

Investigators discovered the clan was working in 2019 with four Italy-based Peruvians and a Colombian.

Two were responsible for cutting the drug, while the other three were professional divers who could recover it at sea on the occasions the cargo was dumped overboard before reaching port.

Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese hailed the arrests as a blow to a crime group believed to have some 20,000 members worldwide.

Deputy prosecutor Alessandra Dolci, who heads up Milan’s anti-mafia task force, said wiretapped conversations gathered during the investigation provided a “photograph” of today’s ‘Ndrangheta.

In segments of the conversations released by police, mobsters could be heard talking about the ritual “baptism by sword” of one member, while others discussed business affairs.

The “extraordinarily complex and difficult” police operation, deputy prosecutor Gaetano Paci said, shone a light on the “360-degree role” played by the Mole’s alleged young leader, Rocco.

The 26 year-old, one of those targeted in Tuesday’s operation, had taken over “the clan’s reins and adopted the role of chief… despite his tender age”.

According to the Gazzetta del Sud daily, Rocco Mole was suspected of becoming the boss despite spending three years as a minor in a project aimed at helping children of mafia families break free.

Mole, whose father is serving a life sentence, left the anti-mafia community in Turin and returned to his family following his uncle’s murder by a rival clan, according to the CNews24 local newspaper.