(ANSA) - Rome, March 9 - The Calabrian mafia or 'Ndrangheta is continuing to grow in Italy and abroad thanks to "unlimited" financial resources, according to an annual report from Italy's anti-mafia directorate (DNA), issued Wednesday.
The growth of 'Ndrangheta, Italy's richest mafia because of its domination of the European cocaine trade, has not been stemmed by a series of high-profile police operations, the report said.
Despite an "incisive and extraordinary activity" in fighting the Calabrian Mob, the report said, 'Ndrangheta "is expanding more and more on the national and international levels, aiming to reaffirm its supremacy with unchanged arrogance, above all through its financial resources, which are now unlimited".
Lombardy, the affluent region around Italy's financial capital Milan, had been victim to a "full-fledged colonisation", the DNA said.
The directorate also said 'Ndrangheta was "further refining its criminal activity".
Thanks to its financial clout, which has been estimated at some 3% of Italy's GDP, the Calabrian syndicate has for some years been ranked the most powerful of Italy's four mafias, which include Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in Naples, and the Sacra Corona Unita (United Holy Crown) in Puglia.
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, also had a hierarchy similar to that of the Sicilian Mafia.
On Tuesday, in a follow-up to July's operation, 35 'Ndrangheta members were arrested in Calabria, Germany, Canada and Australia.
'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 by Daran Oswyn Jones
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