Brazil’s Federal Police Arrest Longtime Fugitive Member of Leading Italian Crime Ring

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Federal Police (PF) executed yesterday morning, July 8th, arrest warrants against two Italians — father and son — suspected of being the representatives of the Italian mafia group known as ‘Ndrangheta  in South America, .

The crime gang, with its origins in the Calabria region of southern Italy, allegedly controls 40 percent of global cocaine shipments, representing the main criminal importing scheme into Europe. They had been on the run since 2014, traveling through Portugal and Argentina.

One of the prisoners has been convicted of trafficking and association with drug trafficking in Italy (with a sentence of 14 years in prison). They occupied at least three apartments in the penthouse of a high-end apartment building in Praia Grande, on the São Paulo coast.

The police found the suspects with two pistols, cash, and vehicles. The warrants were issued by the Federal Supreme Court, at the request of the federal police representation at Interpol, in cooperation with the Central Bureau for Anti-Drug Service of Italy in Brazil.

On Twitter, the minister of Justice and Public Security, Sérgio Moro, congratulated the federal police on the operation. “Brazil must not be a refuge for criminals,” he wrote.

The ‘Ndrangheta is a mafia crime group based in Calabria, Italy. Despite not being as famous abroad as the Sicilian mafia, and generally considered more rural than the Neapolitan Camorra and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unitá, the ‘Ndrangheta became the most powerful crime syndicate in Italy in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A U.S. diplomat estimated that the organization’s narcotics trafficking, extortion and money laundering activities accounted for at least three percent of Italy’s GDP. Since the 1950s, the organization has spread towards northern Italy and worldwide.

According to a 2013 “Threat Assessment on Italian Organised Crime” of Europol and the Guardia di Finanza, the ‘Ndrangheta is among the richest and most powerful organized crime groups at a global level.

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