ROME (Reuters/AP) – A court convicted more than 230 defendants at the end of one of Italy's largest-ever mafia trials which targeted the 'Ndrangheta crime group in its heartland in the southern region of Calabria.
More than 330 suspected mobsters and their alleged associates, including white collar professionals, had been facing an array of charges that include drug trafficking, arms trafficking, extortion and mafia association, a term in Italy’s penal code for members of organized crime groups. Others were charged with acting in complicity with the ’Ndrangheta without actually being a member.
The ’Ndrangheta has quietly amassed power in Italy and abroad as the Sicilian Mafia lost influence and now holds almost a monopoly on cocaine importation in Europe, according to anti-mafia prosecutors who led the investigation in southern Italy. The organization also has bases in North and South America and is active in Africa, Italian prosecutors maintain, and ’Ndrangheta figures have been arrested in recent years around Europe and in Brazil and Lebanon.
Awash in cocaine trafficking revenues, the ’Ndrangheta has gobbled up hotels, restaurants, pharmacies, car dealerships and other businesses throughout Italy, especially in Rome and the country’s affluent north, criminal investigations have revealed.
Read more: 'Ndrangheta with $53bn annual 'yield': Hundreds face sentencing in historic Italian mafia trial
The buying spree spread across Europe as the syndicate sought to launder illicit revenues but also to make “clean” money by running legitimate businesses, including in the tourism and hospitality sectors, investigators alleged.
Italy's Ansa news agency said it took judges 1 hour and 40 minutes just to read their verdict. The heaviest penalties were handed to Saverio Razionale and Domenico Bonavota, two local Calabrian mafia leaders, both given 30-year sentences.
"Today's ruling means a whole province of Calabria has been liberated from the top brass of the criminal group," Nicola Gratteri, one of Italy's best-known magistrates and a former lead prosecutor in the case, told Reuters.
The charges grew out of an investigation of 12 clans linked to a convicted ‘Ndrangheta boss. The central figure, Luigi Mancuso, served 19 years in an Italian prison for his role in leading what investigators allege is one of the ‘Ndrangheta’s most powerful crime families, based in the town of Vibo Valentia.
Among those convicted was Giancarlo Pittelli, a lawyer and former politician with the Forza Italia party – a member of the national ruling coalition – who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for mafia collusion and passing on information.
Gratteri, who changed jobs two months ago to become chief prosecutor in Naples, said that confirming the connection between the 'Ndrangheta and a network of professionals was a pivotal aspect of the verdict.
Giorgio Naselli, a former local police chief, was sentenced to two years and six months.
However, the prosecution did not get as heavy sentences as it was seeking in a number of cases and around 100 of those on trial were cleared.
Monday's first-instance ruling can be appealed by both the defence and the prosecution.
The 'Ndrangheta is considered by prosecutors to be most powerful Italian mafia group, easily eclipsing the more famous Cosa Nostra gang in Sicily, with its influence extending across Europe and beyond.
The trial was held in a converted call-centre in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme, with metal cages installed for the defendants.
The last time Italy tried hundreds of alleged mafiosi simultaneously was in 1986 in Palermo in a case that represented a turning point in the fight against Cosa Nostra, marking the beginning of the group's sharp decline.
That Sicilian trial had a huge impact because it targeted numerous mob families.
The Calabrian trial focused primarily on just one group - the Mancuso clan from the province of Vibo Valentia - leaving much of the 'Ndrangheta's top brass untouched.
Anna Sergi, a professor of criminology at the University of Essex, said the verdict confirmed the prosecutors' reading of the 'Ndrangheta structure in Vibo Valentia.
"Now it has its own specificity," she said, underlining that under Italian law such first instance rulings can be appealed twice before becoming final.
A further 70 defendants from the original trial had been found guilty in November 2021 after opting for a fast-track procedure in return for a reduction in their sentences.
Vincenzo Capomolla, deputy chief prosecutor of Catanzaro, said prosecutors’ overall case held up with the convictions and confirmed the stranglehold the ‘Ndrangheta held on Vibo Valentia.
“The infiltration of the criminal organization in the province of Vibo Valentia was so deep-rooted and so widespread, so alarming, so disturbing that I think it can be noted that there was no aspect of the life of the social economic fabric of the province that was not conditioned by the capacity of the force of intimidation of this so dangerous criminal organization,” he said.