Berlin, May 4, (dpa/GNA) - A huge police operation targeted members of Italy’s powerful ‘Ndrangheta Mafia in Germany and in several other European countries on Wednesday.
In Germany alone, more than 1,000 police officers took part in the raids. Around 30 arrest warrants were executed.
Authorities in countries including Italy, France, Spain, Belgium and Portugal were simultaneously conducting raids as part of the joint operation supported by Europol and Eurojust.
Europol said that “132 members of one of the world’s most powerful criminal networks” were taken into custody as part of the action.
“This international operation against the ‘Ndrangheta… now stands as the largest hit involving the Italian poly-criminal syndicate to date,” Europol said in a statement. “The mafia-style organisation is responsible for much of Europe’s cocaine trade, combined with systematic money laundering, bribery, and violence.”
Italian police said that in total 108 arrest warrants were executed as part of the operation.
In Brussels, 13 people were arrested and 25 house searches were carried out, the Belgian news agency Belga reported, citing the public prosecutor.
The ‘Ndrangheta, based in Calabria in southern Italy, is seen as one of the largest and most powerful crime syndicates in Europe.
Prosecutors in the German cities of Düsseldorf, Koblenz, Saarbrücken and Munich as well as criminal investigation offices in the states of Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Saarland spoke in a joint press release of a major blitz across Europe.
Giovanni Bombardieri, the chief prosecutor of Reggio Calabria region, spoke of “perhaps the most important operation with the greatest cooperation so far” in the fight against organized crime.
Bombardieri also spoke of a “very special day.”
Prosecutor Giuseppe Lombardo reported at a press conference in Reggio Calabria that around 23 tons of cocaine had been seized during the investigation and the raid, with an estimated street value of around €2 billion (nearly $2.2 billion).
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called the raids and measures taken against the criminal group “one of the largest operations carried out to date in the fight against Italian organized crime.”
“With today’s Europe-wide coordinated measures, law enforcement authorities have dealt a serious blow to the ‘Ndrangheta,” Faeser added.
The interior minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Michael Ebling, echoed Faeser’s words, saying: “A clear signal has been sent today: There is no place in Europe for organized crime,” he said.
A Green party lawmwaker meanwhile, said that the operation, although hugely influential, points to gaps in German security.
The reach of these criminal groups is enormous, said Marcel Emmerich, the Greens’ representative in parliament’s Interior Committee. Their brutality and their networks are a still-underestimated security risk, he added. “Over decades, Germany has become a safe haven for mafia billions, money laundering and tax evasion.”
“The raids must not hide the fact that Italian Mafia organizations continue to operate their brutal businesses in Germany largely undetected,” the lawmaker added. He said it was important to remain resolute in this regard, to strengthen structural investigations and the analytical capacity of the security authorities.
Those targeted are accused, among other things, of money laundering, tax evasion, fraud and drug smuggling.
According to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the ‘Ndrangheta is currently the “most relevant Mafia group” with a dominant position in the European cocaine market. “It is trying to expand its territory and exert influence on Calabrian migrant communities,” the BKA said in a statement.
GNA