Police in Italy have arrested 108 people in a huge operation targeting clans belonging to the Calabria-based ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
The arrests were part of a coordinated probe by investigators in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, German authorities said.
Wednesday’s operation, code named ‘Eureka’, primarily hit the Nirta-Strangio and Morabito mafia clans in order to dismantle an international drugs ring.
The suspects are accused of money laundering, criminal tax evasion, fraud and smuggling of drugs, mafia-type criminal association, possession and trafficking of weapons.
The ‘Ndrangheta is widely considered to have become Italy’s most powerful organised-crime syndicate.
The group is based in Calabria in southern Italy and is seen as one of the largest and most powerful crime syndicates in Europe as it eclipsed the Sicilian mafia by transporting tens of billions of euros worth of cocaine from South America to Europe over the past decades.
Its reach has also stretched outside its southern Italian base and gone beyond the country’s borders.
Operation Eureka featured raids in Rome, Milan, Salerno, Catania, Bologna and eight other Italian cities.
The mafia is thought to have trafficked enormous amounts of cocaine from South America to Europe via container ships docked in Antwerp, Rotterdam, and the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro.
