This Wednesday, May 3, a vast police operation, known as Eureka, was launched simultaneously in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The goal is to eradicate the influence of the most important European mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, and its international cocaine traffic. The large-scale interventions were coordinated by the European police agency Europol and the European judicial authority Eurojust. Thousands of police are mobilized to carry out the various arrests and searches. According to the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 130 arrests, including 105 in Italy alone, have taken place.
San Luca, a small town of 3,400 inhabitants in Calabria, in southwestern Italy, is the epicenter of the powerful ‘Ndrangheta mafia. At the start of the day, the village was besieged by heavily armed special units and numerous riflemen deployed.
The German judicial authorities, the first to have communicated on the interventions, have also deployed more than 1,000 agents throughout the country, mainly in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Thuringia. According to FAZ, this campaign extends beyond the Atlantic since the operation also takes place in Brazil or Panama.
The ‘Ndrangheta begin to lose their brains. On April 27, in the cathedral of Genoa, Pasquale Bonavota, one of the leaders of the organization, was arrested after almost five years on the run. He was the subject of an arrest warrant for homicide and mafia association. Nicknamed “Boss Baby”, the 49-year-old is one of Europe’s leading cocaine control players.
