Mafia News

A turning point

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a turning point, recalled Piero Grasso, Italy’s senior anti-mafia prosecutor. In conversations recorded by police, members of the Calabrian mob plotted a mad buying spree in the newly available former Soviet bloc. “Buy everything!” was the watchword.

“And today they know no borders,” Grasso said.

Here in Calabria, they also enjoy access to the Gioia Tauro port, one of the largest and busiest of the Mediterranean. Authorities say it is a transshipment point for unmeasured pounds of cocaine. Of the estimated 3,500 40-foot cargo containers that arrive daily, only about 25 are opened for inspection, so finding drugs is as much luck as skill, police say.

Suspicions were raised recently about a Uruguayan shipment to Greece marked “lemons.” Why would a Mediterranean country like Greece need to import lemons from Uruguay? Inside a batch of rotting lemons, inspectors found 220 pounds of cocaine.

“Drugs are burying us,” said Col. Francesco Gazzani, regional head of the Italian finance police.

In their investigations, Italian police and prosecutors working with Colombian, Spanish and U.S. authorities have recorded thousands of telephone calls and documented meetings and other communication between the ‘Ndrangheta and Colombian traffickers.

In one photographed surveillance stakeout, four people from Latin America and Calabria can be seen sitting in broad daylight at one of Milan’s most fashionable outdoor cafes, against a backdrop of rose-colored marble columns and the Duomo cathedral. They discuss a cocaine deal, then one of them casually walks to a nearby pay phone and places the order.

In another surveillance, a suspected ‘Ndrangheta gangster telephones a number in Colombia, a person with a Calabrian accent answers and then simply whistles, and the caller says, “I understand.” Authorities say it was a signal that a shipment had departed.

One of the strongest links between the ‘Ndrangheta and the Colombians, investigators say, was Roberto Pannunzi, an alleged mafia chieftain who was one of the top cocaine brokers in the syndicate when he was arrested in 2004 as part of Operation Zappa, a five-year investigation named after a gangster code word for “gun.”

“Every important criminal figure went to him,” said Diego Trotta, a member of an elite police squad that captured Pannunzi.

Pannunzi, 59, married his son Alessandro into a notorious family from Colombia’s Medellin cartel as a way to cement the bonds. At the height of his activities, authorities say, he was buying 3,300 to 4,400 pounds of cocaine a month. He boasted of the ease and confidence with which he handled his Colombian suppliers.

“The fact is, Barba [a Colombian trafficker] will give us everything without even a lira,” Pannunzi told alleged ‘Ndrangheta operative Paolo Sergi, the target of another long-running probe, according to a confidential wiretap made available to The Times.

“What do you think — is the same amount available like the last time, or maybe less?” Pannunzi’s interlocutor wonders.

“Barba, at least, told me that he has 3 million [3,000 kilograms, or 6,600 pounds, of cocaine] and I’m thinking 500 or 700,” Pannunzi responds, using a numeric code for the price.

A beefy man with dark wavy hair, Pannunzi amassed such an enormous fortune, investigators say, that he at one point simply threw away millions of dollars worth of liras because the bills had been stacked so high and for so long that they became moldy.

Back to ancestral home

Perhaps one of the most surprising features of the ‘Ndrangheta is that despite its fortunes, its members always come back to their ancestral home in Calabria, almost as a spiritual touchstone. Though they form clones of their home villages the world over, an internal code obliges them to report back to the mother ship, said Gratteri, the top regional ant-mafia prosecutor.

“You have to look at what this place gives them. Each top ‘Ndranghista is an emperor,” said Gratteri, whose work has earned him round-the-clock bodyguards and transport in an armored car.

“He has the perverse pleasure to be able to decide the life or death of 3,000, 5,000, maybe 10,000 people. He decides who lives. He decides who is going to be mayor. He decides who is going to win the state contracts. For the perverse mind, this is very gratifying.”

Each family assigns a member to a certain criminal enterprise; if a son is good in math, he might get the loan-shark business, whereas an engineer would handle the acquisition of lucrative state building contracts, a major area of corruption.

The tightness of the family network also has thwarted efforts by authorities to infiltrate the crime gang. Several years ago, when the government offered reduced jail time to mafiosi who would inform on their cohorts, hundreds of Cosa Nostra operatives ‘fessed up. But only a few people associated with the ‘Ndrangheta agreed to become turncoats, and most of these were such minor figures that they had little to offer.

“Every clan is a little Sparta,” militarized and willing to fight to the end, often egged on by the women of the family, said anti-mafia prosecutor Alberto Cisterna.

Through the years, most killings by the ‘Ndrangheta have been the result of internal feuds or have targeted relatively low-level officials, inspiring little public outrage. That changed last summer with a bloody ambush outside a pizzeria in Duisburg, Germany. At least two gunmen from one ‘Ndrangheta family killed six members of a rival clan, shocking Italians and Germans because of the brutality of the attack and the extent to which the mafia had settled in Germany.

The slayings were the latest explosion of a long-running internal feud that had at its root a power struggle over territory and business, investigators say.

In the more than four months since the Duisburg massacre, Italian and German police have arrested about 40 suspected mobsters, men and women. But no one has any illusions that this represents a setback for the Calabrian mafia.

” ‘Ndrangheta are the leader in Europe when it comes to trafficking cocaine,” Gratteri said, “and their trafficking is getting stronger all the time.”

Little-known mafia is cocaine ‘king’ - December 27, 2007 - By Tracy Wilkinson - Los Angeles Times Staff Writer - From the Los Angeles Times - http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-mafia27dec27,1,699290.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true

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