NDRANGHETA ARRESTS IN CALABRIA, GERMANY, CANADA, AUSTRALIA

NDRANGHETA ARRESTS IN CALABRIA, GERMANY, CANADA, AUSTRALIA

(ANSA) - Reggio Calabria, March 8

- Italian police on Tuesday arrested 41 suspected members of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate in their native Calabria as well as the northern Italian cities of Turin and Genoa and Germany, Canada and Australia.

Among those detained was the former mayor of Stirling, outside Perth, Tony Vallelonga, who led that western Australian town from 1996 to 2005.

Six suspected mafiosi were taken into custody in Germany and five in Canada and Australia, judicial sources said.

Those detained are suspected of carrying out a range of mafia offences including robbery, murder, drug trafficking, protection rackets, money laundering and possession of arms and explosives.

Sources said the Calabrian mafia, which was recently found to have a structure similar to that of Cosa Nostra, had replicated their operational units or 'drine' in northern Italy and abroad.

As part of the operation, police recorded a meeting of 'Ndrangheta members from Switzerland with their counterparts in Germany, headed by a boss called Bruno Nesci.

In Australia the criminal organisation had taken on the name Thunder Bay, police said.
The Canadian branch was based in Toronto.

In Calabria, police had to work for hours to smoke out a boss, 46-year-old Bruno Maisano, holed up in a bunker near his house.

Reggio Calabria chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone said the operation had provided "confirmation of the expansion of 'Ndrangheta, not only into international drugs trafficking but also as a mafia organisation, outside Italy".

Abroad, there is a perfect reproduction of the Calabrian organisation...but without any doubt the fulcrum remains Calabria and the province of Reggio Calabria in particular".

Tuesday's sweep also found evidence that 'Ndrangheta groups had influenced elections in and around Reggio.

Justice Minister Angelino Alfano called the operation "another extraordinary success" in the fight against organised crime.

'Ndrangheta is now the most powerful mafia in Italy thanks to its hold on the European cocaine trade.
It has carried out many vendetta killings in recent years including the massacre of six men in Duisburg, Germany in August 2007, a crime that gained splash headlines for a syndicate that had been hitherto little known to the international public.

The Italian government has made the fight against 'Ndrangheta a priority and has set up its national mafia assets seizure agency in Reggio Calabria.

A massive police operation in July caught 'Ndrangheta's No.1, the equivalent of Cosa Nostra's 'boss of bosses', as well as its chief in Lombardy and revealed that the Calabrians, already known to be more closely knit and impenetrable than Cosa Nostra, had a hierarchy similar to that of the Sicilian Mafia.

Yesterday's operation was a follow-up to July's in which more than 304 'Ndrangheta operatives were caught, police said.

'Ndrangheta, whose name means 'virtue' or 'heroism' in a local form of ancient Greek, once dealt mainly in kidnappings and extortion and fed off the pickings of public tenders, living in the shadow of its Sicilian cousin.
But it has since expanded to northern Italy, northern Europe and other countries, where it invests its huge drugs profits.

Sourced at Life in italy.com for Addio Pizzo by Daran Oswyn Jones