The 251 luxury cars stolen, from Canada to Gioia Tauro. The trafficking of the 'Ndrangheta
by Carlo Macrì
They are Mercedes, Porsche, Chrysler, Audi worth 150-200 thousand euros. An investigation that lasted two years and 18 suspicious ships

The 'ndrangheta as a connecting element between Canadian organized crime and commercial trafficking in Africa and the Middle East. With a focal point: the port of Gioia Tauro. The business is that of large-engined cars, stolen in Canada and then placed in Turkey, Arab countries and North Africa.

An information from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police , which reached the hands of the Gioia Tauro police, triggered, two years ago, the investigations which on Thursday (January 18) led to the seizure in the Calabrian port of 251 large cars (and 7,650 dollars kept inside one of the cars). These are top class cars, such as Mercedes, Porsche, Chrysler, Audi, whose individual value is around 150-200 thousand euros.

500 containers searched
The investigation coordinated by the Palmi prosecutor's office also involved the Financial Police and the Customs Agency, which had to search around 500 containers and sift through the documentation that the Canadian organizers had cleverly disguised. The car traffic was distributed across 18 cargo ships, departing from the ports of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, destined for Africa. It is here that the large-engined cars were then placed and sold without any particular problems given that, in those countries, there is no legislation to regularize the entry of foreign cars, even without appropriate documentation.

Why Canada
Just as there is no legislation in Canada that can lead to the owner of a car if it were stolen. If a Canadian citizen's car is stolen - explain the Financial Police investigators - he will hardly be able to recover it. This legislative gap has allowed the Canadian organization to steal hundreds of high-powered cars over the years, disguise the chassis data and then resell them at extraordinary prices in African countries. Almost new vehicles that have a thriving market in the East, given the demand.

The Calabrian side of the 'ndrangheta
The new business that the Canadian mafia manages will probably also have a Calabrian side and, above all, the 'Ndrangheta of Gioia Tauro. Canada is a territory where the Calabrian gangs, especially those of Jonica Reggio, have been the economic force of that state for decades. The organizers therefore thought that making an intermediate stop in Gioia Tauro, the most important port in the Mediterranean, with 3,500,000 containers of traffic (record in 2023), would have fewer problems in passing the counterfeit goods (in this case the luxury), precisely due to the enormity of handling in the Calabrian port. International cocaine traffickers who use the Calabrian port for storing drugs also make a similar reasoning. Which, from South America, arrives in Gioia Tauro and is then transferred to Spain, Northern Europe, to flood the drug markets. A mechanism that has been tested for years and often gets blocked due to the tight customs controls that use sophisticated equipment whose eye is able to scan the inside of the container, until it locates the cocaine, even if it is hidden among the fruit or preserves.