An alleged leader of the powerful Neapolitan-based mafia, the Camorra, has been arrested in southern Spain, Italian prosecutors have said.

Raffaele Amato was detained in a joint operation by Italian and Spanish police in the city of Marbella on Saturday.

Mr Amato is accused of eight murders between 1991 and 1993, and of being “the principal, or one of the principal importers of cocaine into Italy”.

He had been living under a false name on the Costa del Sol, police said.

by The Guardian, April 22 2009

Mexican drug traffickers are funneling cocaine to Italian organised crime, and some shipments are moving through Dallas.

“We’ve got some of the major cartel members established here dealing their wares in Europe,” said James Capra, head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s Dallas office.

Experts say warring cartels battered by unprecedented US and Mexican government crackdowns are increasingly looking to Europe as an expansion market. Across the Atlantic, demand for cocaine is high and prices are up. A kilo sold for $20,000 in Dallas is worth up to three times as much overseas, experts say.

Mexican cartel operatives in north Texas “are dealing with Italy, Spain, you name it,” he said. “They can operate their logistical center from here and coordinate between Mexico, Central America and Europe.”

Italian capos are venturing to north Texas to get in on the action, says one mob expert.

“Places like Houston and Dallas are where these criminal organisations are most likely to invest their money,” said Antonio Nicaso, an internationally recognised author and lecturer on Italian organized crime. “This is the right time, with the recession going on.”

Dallas has long been a recognised distribution hub for drugs smuggled up the Interstate 35 corridor from Laredo. From here, narcotics head out across the country to Atlanta, Chicago, New England and elsewhere.

The revelation that the cartels are forming alliances with Italian syndicates came last year when the DEA revealed that the Mexican Gulf cartel, which supplies Dallas with cocaine, was working with New York associates of the powerful Italian ‘Ndrangheta mafia.

Last August, the DEA arrested a Dallas County jailer accused of tipping off drug dealers to what appeared to be a small-time local narcotics conspiracy. The jailer, Brenda Medina Salinas, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. As others pleaded guilty and court documents piled up, it became clear that the drug pipeline in that case reached all the way to Europe and the clandestine world of the Camorra.

The Naples-based Camorra traces its roots to the 16th century. Ruthlessly violent when they need to be, Camorra members often smuggle behind quiet business fronts. They’re known to work across ethnic and political lines.

Relatively little is known about the local Camorra associate, other than that he had ties to Dallas, Houston and Mexico.

The Camorra associate was not charged in the case because agents had not developed enough information to nab him when they were forced to act because of Salinas’s leaking information to co-conspirators.

Agents learned the Camorra associate’s name last May. That’s when DEA agents monitoring a meeting between him and his local contacts asked Dallas police to pull over the Camorra associate’s car and check his identity.

He had just met with Higinio “Gino” Hernandez, a 30-year-old flooring installer from Carrollton, and Altin Kore, a 32-year-old Dallas man also charged in conspiracy. Kore is charged in the case but is a fugitive. Hernandez has pleaded guilty.

The DEA began investigating the Hernandez network after being tipped by Italian authorities in the fall of 2007. Their wiretaps on Camorra associates in Italy revealed a Dallas cocaine supplier.

Higinio Hernandez was close to his brother Henry “Tito” Hernandez, 34, of Dallas, who has also pleaded guilty. A third brother, Luis, 35, has been charged but is a fugitive.

Henry and Higinio worked for years as flooring installer subcontractors for Carpet One in Southlake.

“They were leading a double life,” said prosecutor Ernest Gonzalez in Plano. “They were doing flooring by day, and at night they were conducting these drug transactions.”

It was obvious to those around them that laying floors was not their only source of income.

When they were arrested last fall, federal agents seized Higinio’s Cadillac Escalade and Lexus IS30, as well as Henry’s Escalade.

Henry and Luis kept snapshots of themselves partying in limos with friends, booze and women. They also had dealings in Cuba, authorities say.

“They didn’t hide their money,” Gonzalez said.

Authorities say Higinio’s supplier in Mexico was half brother Rodolfo Lopez, 35, another fugitive charged in the case.

While living in the US, Lopez forged the relationship with the Camorra associate and dealt with cocaine producers in Colombia and elsewhere, authorities say. Lopez eventually relocated to Mexico, where authorities say he directed shipments to his brothers in Dallas.

From Dallas, the cocaine was taken to Houston, where the Camorra associate operated a scented candle export business. It took about a month for the cocaine, smuggled amongst the candles, to make the voyage across the Atlantic to Italy.

Major ports attract Italian organized crime syndicates, which operate in at least 19 US cities, according to the US justice department’s latest Drug Threat Assessment.

The Hernandez case is considered somewhat of an anomaly among law enforcement. Federal agents for years have said that the mafia has no significant grip here.

Still, after a lull, mob influence nationwide seems to be increasing, experts say. Much of their work is partnering with the Mexican distributors and Colombian producers and supplying Europe with cocaine.

It’s a good time to expand to Europe, as crackdowns on both sides of the US-Mexico border have made smuggling cocaine into Texas increasingly difficult. In the past year, authorities have arrested more than 500 Gulf Cartel and 750 rival Sinaloa Cartel members here and in Mexico.

Extraditions of Mexican narcos to the US for prosecution are on the rise under president Felipe Calderon, who has deployed military troops to quell violence in border towns.

Still, a downside to dabbling in international markets is the increased scrutiny by a larger net of law enforcement agencies - which is what stopped the Hernandez ring.

Last spring, DEA agents in Dallas learned that a meeting was to take place between Higinio and the Camorra associate. On May 15, agents set up surveillance at a Chili’s restaurant in Dallas.

It was not a pleasant meeting for Higinio. DEA agents were watching as the Italian poked a finger in his chest. The cocaine they were selling wasn’t pure enough, he told Hernandez. Customers were complaining.

After the meeting, Higinio reached out to his brother, Henry, to see if his own supplier, Moises Duarte, could get purer powder.

But agents were forced to swoop in before any more cocaine made it to Italy.

The reason: Brenda Salinas. The 23-year-old befriended Henry Hernandez and Duarte on the club scene in Dallas, and eventually dated both men.

As a jailer with Dallas County, she had access to law enforcement databases. In July, when agents learned that she was feeding both men information, DEA agents felt they had to act. They arrested Duarte and set up stings on his cohorts.

So far, nine defendants - including Salinas - have pleaded guilty. Among them is an Albanian financial consultant from Dallas. He has ties to an ex-stockbroker being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with an alleged pump-and-dump stock scam.

According to the DEA, the investigation is ongoing.

Police in Amsterdam have arrested the main suspect in the gangland killing of six Italian men in the German city of Duisburg in August 2007.

Giovanni Strangio was detained with his brother-in-law - also a Mafia suspect - in a joint operation involving Dutch, German and Italian police. Police believe the killings were part of a long-running feud among members of the Calabrian Mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta.

The victims, linked to the Pelle-Votari clan, were gunned down near a pizzeria. The killers are believed to be members of the rival Nirta-Strangio clan, based in the Italian town of San Luca. Several other suspects have been arrested in Italy.

The Calabria-based ‘Ndrangheta has become one of the most powerful criminal organisations in Italy, correspondents say, having overtaken the Sicilian Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, with the expansion of its international drug trafficking activities inside Europe.

For more than a decade, San Luca, a town of about 4,500 at the southern tip of Italy, has been the focal point of a bitter feud between rival ‘Ndrangheta clans.

The feud dates back to an egg-throwing incident in 1991, when a fight broke out that left two young men dead and two injured. The murder of Maria Strangio, a cousin of Giovanni Strangio, on 25 December 2006 is also believed to have been linked to the feud.

The programme:

March 22nd
2:30 PM: five-a-five football tournament “Dai un calcio al razzismo” (”Kick racism off”) at the Parish S. Vincenzo de Paoli, v. Milano 59, Settimo.
6:00 PM: official inauguration, ribbon-cutting, and benediction of the house. The ceremony will be celebrated by Luigi Ciotti, Silvio Caretto, and Lucian Rosu (Romanian Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross, Turin).
19:30: buffet dinner, at the Parish Hall.
21:00: theatrical performance of the children, care of M. Fabbris and E. Ruzza.
21:30: concert - Orchestra di Ritmi Moderni Arturo Piazza, Bruskoi Prala

Moreover, at Il Dado (via Cottolengo 2) from 3:30 to 9:30 PM it will be possible to visit the photo exhibition by Ivo Saglietti, awarded many national and international prizes, between which, the World Press Photo.

March 23rd
9:00 AM: seminar “Social housing, social inclusion and fight against racism: Il Dado, a possible solution”. Council Hall of the City of Settimo, piazza Vittorio Veneto 4, Settimo.
1:30 PM: visit to Il Dado, buffet lunch.

Pre-recorded Broadcast on the satellite channel RAI News 24.

The campaign involves 26 organizations - among which the UNHCR, secular and religious associations, international NGOs and the most important Italian trade unions - that unprecedently come together to promote and to implement a national campaign that aims at favoring people’s understanding and dialogue, at smoothening prejudices and stereotypes that are often cause of intollerance and racist episodes.

“Don’t be afraid, open up to rights and to the others” is based on the correspondent manifesto named “Manifesto against racism, indifference and against neighbour’s fear” edited by the campaign promoters. Italian citizens will be asked to sign the Manifesto and the signatures collected at the antional level will be delivered to Mr Giorgio Napolitano, President of the Italian Republic, on June 20, World Refugee Day.

All campaign media material is available at the official campaign website www.nonaverpaura.org from March 18.

The alarm comes from a confidential report of the “Bundeskriminalamt” (Bka), the federal anti-crime Bureau, of which the main points are highlighted in tomorrow’s issue (10 of March) of the weekly magazine “Focus”. The dossier edited by the special police department of Wiesbaden says that starting from the 80’s, the Calabresi crime organization has been creating in Germany a rooted system with specific structures fonctioning as «bases for criminal actions» as well as hiding places for bosses and killers affiliated with the clan.

In the mentioned report, it is also mentioned that there are 230 clan spread on the national territory plus some hundreds of adherents. The bases are mostly set in the Nordreno-Westfalia, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Baviera and Assia laender and in the 5 Est-German laender. Currently, the most dangerous clans are those belonging to the families Romeo-Pelle-Vottari from San Luca and those of the families Farao and Carelli. For what concerns their activities, they control arms and drug trafficking, estortion and tossic waste disposal. The incomes are loundered mostly in the gastronomic and hotel industry with significant investement capitals.

The BKA’s report reveals that since 1997, there have been 77 ‘ndrangheta affiliates arrested in Germany, whereas the famous Duisburg slaughter perpetrated in August 2007 demontrated how powerful and violent can the ‘ndrangheta be in Germany.

A beefy man named Mauro answered. He wore blue overalls with two big pockets, one stuffed with checks and the other with cash. The wad of bills he handed over, the art dealer recalled, reeked of the man’s cologne and came at 120 percent annual interest.

As banks stop lending amid the global financial crisis, the likes of Mauro are increasingly becoming the face of Italian finance. The Mafia and its loan sharks, nearly everyone agrees, smell blood in the troubled waters.

“It’s a fantastic time for the Mafia. They have the cash,” said Antonio Roccuzzo, the author of several books on organized crime. “The Mafia has enormous liquidity. It may be the only Italian ‘company’ without any cash problem.”

At a time when businesses most need loans as they struggle with falling sales, rising debt and impending bankruptcy, banks have tightened their lending to them.

Italian banks, which for years had been widely criticized for lending sparingly to small and medium-size businesses, now have “absolutely closed the purse strings,” said Gian Maria Fara, the president of Eurispes, a private research institute.

That is great news for loan sharks. Confesercenti, the national shopkeepers association, estimates that 180,000 businesses recently have turned to them in desperation. Although some shady lenders are freelancers turning profits on others’ hard luck, very often the neighborhood tough offering fat rolls of cash is connected to the Mafia, the group said.

“Office workers, middle-class people, owners of fruit stands, flower stalls are all becoming their victims. . . . We have never seen this happen,” said Lino Busa, a top Confesercenti official. “It is as common as it is hidden.”

Many experts say organized crime is already the biggest business in Italy. Now, Fara said, the untaxed underground economy is growing even larger. “Certainly I am worried,” he said. “The banking system doesn’t work, and the private one that is operating is often managed by organized crime.”

The consequences for Italy and its 58 million people are huge, Fara said: “Stronger organized crime means a weaker state.”

Nino Miceli, an adviser to Confesercenti, said the Mafia’s goal is to take over the struggling businesses. When the loans, typically at interest rates in triple digits, are not repaid, the threats of violence begin, and restaurants, grocery stores and bars become the property of criminal gangs.

“As we sit here in this cafe,” he said over an espresso near the Colosseum, “do we really know who owns it?”

[...]

For more info please visit www.trenodellamemoria.net or www.terradelfuoco.org

Almost 100 alleged Cosa Nostra “godfathers” and rank-and-file mobsters were arrested today in an operation that Italy’s chief anti-mafia prosecutor said had smashed an attempt to reconstitute the crime syndicate’s “high command”.

More than 1,200 paramilitary carabinieri took part in the raids, which included operations in the sedate, prosperous region of Tuscany. Helicopter and dog-handling units were also used as part of Operation Perseus – an allusion to the hero of Greek mythology who decapitated the gorgon Medusa.
Link to this audio

Pietro Grasso, the head of the national anti-mafia prosecution service, said an extensive operation in June 2006 had brought the Cosa Nostra “to its knees”.

“With Operation Perseus, we have stopped it from rising up again, by cutting off all the strategic, thinking heads of a new command structure that was meant to have deliberated, as in the past, on serious matters.”

What sort of “serious matters” the new body was being set up to decide is not yet clear. Little has been heard of Cosa Nostra’s top decision-making body, known as the Provincial Commission, since the early 1990s when the Sicilian mafia embarked on a full-scale war of terror aimed at the Italian state. Under the leadership of Salvatore “Totò” Riina, known as The Animal, the Cosa Nostra assassinated the country’s two most expert anti-mafia prosecutors and bombed targets on the mainland.

The other unresolved issue is who was intended to lead the new provincial commission. One Italian media report today quoted an investigator as saying the inquiry that led to the raids had revealed the existence of a “tough and dangerous conflict” within Cosa Nostra over the appointment.

The last undisputed capo di tutti i capi or “boss of bosses” was Bernardo Provenzano, arrested two years ago. The most senior mobster still at large is thought by investigators to be 46-year-old Matteo Messina Denaro, the so-called “playboy Godfather”, who has a reputation for living life in the fast lane. But Messina Denaro is from Trapani, outside the province of Palermo from which all the mafia’s previous leaders have been recruited.

Residents in some areas of Palermo, the regional capital, and of at least two nearby towns woke up this morning to find themselves under virtual siege by heavily armed carabinieri. One said the scenes recalled those of 20-odd years ago when prosecutors ordered police into action on the basis of the first disclosures made by so-called ‘pentiti’ (mafiosi who start to collaborate with police).

On this occasion, however, the key evidence was said by investigators to have come, not from supergrasses, but listening devices.

Several hundred searches were carried. Among the charges levelled at the 99 alleged mafiosi arrested this morning were extortion, arms trafficking and drugs trafficking.

It was widely believed that Cosa Nostra had been forced by rival Italian mafia groups to take a subsidiary role in the import of narcotics, and particularly cocaine. But evidence gathered during the investigation reportedly suggested that the Sicilian mafia remained active in international trafficking.

ROME–Italian shopkeepers pay about $380 million a day to mafia protection rackets and loan sharks and fear the current downturn could allow organized crime to further tighten its stranglehold on the vulnerable economy.

The warning came yesterday from the Italian shopkeepers’ association Confesercenti, many of whose members are frightened into paying the pizzo – as protection money is known – to the various regional crime groups in southern Italy.

“The economic crisis makes the mafia even more dangerous,” said Confesercenti chair Marco Venturi, presenting a study called, “Crime’s Hold on Business.”

“Mafia businesses threaten to use the economy’s weakness and uncertainty to strengthen their position,” he said, urging banks and government to secure credit so that desperate firms do not turn to loan sharks, though an estimated 180,000 already have.

The four biggest Mafias – Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta, Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, Naples’ Camorra and Puglia’s Sacra Corona Unita – make up “a huge holding company with total turnover of about $200 billion and profits approaching $110 billion.”

This chimes with recent data suggesting that these groups’ combined earnings would make them the biggest company in Italy.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni last month said the ‘Ndrangheta alone – which, with its hold on the European drugs market, has outgrown the Cosa Nostra – makes $68 billion a year, which he said was “almost 3 per cent of GDP.”

The new study focused on Mafia activities directly relating to the business world, from protection money and usury to night clubs, restaurants, building, butchers, fish markets, bakeries and even funerals – a commercial empire worth about $140 billion a year or 6 per cent of the economy, the association said.

“Every day a huge mass of money goes out of the pockets of Italian shopkeepers and entrepreneurs and into those of the Mafias …, said Confesercenti.

The study, drawing on information from Confesercenti’s huge network of members and its own Mafia research arm, SOS Impresa, even gave estimates of pay structures in the mob, ranging from $15,000 to $60,000 a month earned by a “Clan chief or CEO” to the $2,300 paid to a racket “enforcer” or a drug pusher.

It detailed the going rates for protection money in Sicily and Naples, with building sites forking out $15,000 a month to avoid sabotage, supermarkets $4,500 to $7,500 a month, small shops $300 to $750 and market stalls handing over a few dollars a day.

There were stomach-churning tales of the Mafia in the food industry, from shady butchers repackaging rotten salami or meat from diseased livestock to bakeries using unsafe fuel for ovens – “in some cases, wood from coffins after bodies were exhumed.”