A European-level police operation led, on Tuesday 27 June, to the arrest of 43 members of the ‘Ndrangheta, the dreaded Calabrian Mafia, accused, among other things, of electoral fraud, corruption of politicians and of having distorted the award of public contracts.
Most of the suspects arrested on Tuesday and belonging to this branch of the mafia based in the town of Crotone, in Calabria, the tip of the Boot, are of Italian nationality, but a few are German or Austrian.
According to the investigators, the suspects worked in particular to infiltrate some of the members of their clan in key positions within the administrations and local political bodies to control and exploit the territories under their jurisdiction. The clan resorted to extortion and violence, including a 2014 homicide, Europol said in a statement.
These infiltrations allowed the mafia clan to manipulate procedures for awarding public contracts, thanks to which they benefited from at least 3 million euros in European funds.
The criminal network had also set up a complex network of dirty money laundering with international ramifications using the services of hackers. “German hackers have thus carried out operations on clandestine platforms to launder illicit assets”, according to Europol. Some of this dirty money has also been laundered by gambling establishments, restaurants, grocery stores, transport companies, real estate companies…
This operation, supported by the European police cooperation agencies, Europol, and judicial cooperation, Eurojust, mobilized a thousand Italian, German and Austrian police officers.
In addition to the arrests, law enforcement also seized sixteen companies, twenty-five real estate properties and fifteen vehicles for a total value of 5 million euros.
