Italian Police Swoop Up Mafia
- 14 years ago
The Italian police have arrested dozens of Mafia members throughout southern Italy. The vast operation revealed that Mafia members from different groups were partnering in crime.
On Monday, police arrested dozens of members from Italy's various mafia groups.
It was a large-scale operation successfully netting large caches of weapons smuggled in from Bosnia.
Anti-Mafia police say the raids were carried out across southern Italy, against members of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Naples-area Camorra.
The mafia groups were trying to wrest control of the lucrative fruit and vegetable trade throughout the south, from Rome to Sicily.
Police issued more than 70 arrest warrants and confiscated real estate, weapons and vehicles, worth millions of Euros.
Among the weapons seized were bazookas, military rifles, RPG launchers and grenades.
And police caught the rising boss of the Casalesi clan of the Camorra, Paolo Schiavone, on a luxury cruise ship. Schiavone was returning from a honeymoon.
Head of the Naples area Anti-Mafia Police, General Antonio Girone, says the discovery of a pact made between the various mafia groups is worrying.
Girone says the clans have traditionally worked separately in their own territories.
The infiltration of organised crime in the fruit and vegetable trade, including transport control, has bloated prices from the production level to retail by 200 per cent.
The growers, truckers and retailers are forced to pass on the costs to consumers as the direct result of the extortion crimes.
On Monday, police arrested dozens of members from Italy's various mafia groups.
It was a large-scale operation successfully netting large caches of weapons smuggled in from Bosnia.
Anti-Mafia police say the raids were carried out across southern Italy, against members of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Naples-area Camorra.
The mafia groups were trying to wrest control of the lucrative fruit and vegetable trade throughout the south, from Rome to Sicily.
Police issued more than 70 arrest warrants and confiscated real estate, weapons and vehicles, worth millions of Euros.
Among the weapons seized were bazookas, military rifles, RPG launchers and grenades.
And police caught the rising boss of the Casalesi clan of the Camorra, Paolo Schiavone, on a luxury cruise ship. Schiavone was returning from a honeymoon.
Head of the Naples area Anti-Mafia Police, General Antonio Girone, says the discovery of a pact made between the various mafia groups is worrying.
Girone says the clans have traditionally worked separately in their own territories.
The infiltration of organised crime in the fruit and vegetable trade, including transport control, has bloated prices from the production level to retail by 200 per cent.
The growers, truckers and retailers are forced to pass on the costs to consumers as the direct result of the extortion crimes.