MILAN: Italian police arrested 40 people on Tuesday in a new crackdown targeting the \u2018Ndrangheta mafia, with suspects accused of drugs trafficking with counterparts in Latin America using shadow networks of Chinese money brokers.
\n\u201cToday\u2019s raid is a crucial operation that showed how the \u2018Ndrangheta is an octopus that a everywhere with interconnections all over the world,\u201d Guardia di Finanza police captain Angelo Santori said.
\nThe breakthrough comes less than a month after an operation in which European police arrested more than 100 mafia suspects in a major operation against drugs and weapons smuggling.
\nSantori, who led the latest investigation in the northern city of Bologna, said police were executing 40 arrest warrants, including for four Albanians and two Chinese suspects, as well as restricting the movements of suspected Calabrian mafia members in seven Italian regions.
\nThe investigation, spanning late 2019 to July 2022, traced the traffic of 1.2 tons of cocaine, 450 kg of hashish and 95 kg of marijuana, Guardia di Finanza police said in a statement.
\nThe network was able to handle drug shipments with powerful South American cartels, including the Brazilian Primeiro Comando da Capital, and Colombian, Peruvian, Mexican and Bolivian criminal organizations, police said.
\nThe \u2018Ndrangheta, which has its roots in the southern Italian region of Calabria, has surpassed Cosa Nostra as the most powerful mafia group in the country, and one of the largest criminal networks in the world.
\n\u201cAn active role was played by a network of Chinese subjects through the so-called \u2018fei ch\u2019ien\u2019, an informal money transfer system with which more than 5 million euros ($5.50 million) was laundered,\u201d Santori added.
\nAccording to Italian police, after receiving the cash, the Chinese money brokers forwarded it to trading companies in China and Hong Kong. The companies then delivered the money to the drug brokers and the South American cartels themselves through agents based abroad.
\nSeveral recent investigations have shown how drugs cartels in Italy are increasingly using shadow networks of unlicensed Chinese money brokers to conceal cross-border payments.
\nThe investigation was helped by accessing encrypted chats on a platform that was dismantled in 2021 by a Europol Joint Investigation Team, and cooperation with the US Homeland Security Investigations, the Italian police statement said. ($1 = 0.9084 euros)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MILAN: Italian police arrested 40 people on Tuesday in a new crackdown targeting the \u2018Ndrangheta mafia, with suspects accused of drugs trafficking with counterparts in Latin America using shadow networks of Chinese money brokers. \u201cToday\u2019s raid is a crucial operation that showed how the \u2018Ndrangheta is an octopus that a everywhere with interconnections all over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-334315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n