The jailing of an Italian restaurateur for money laundering proves that mob activity from Calabria has reached Britain.

Edoardo Archetta first opened the folding doors of his Italian restaurant, Bucci, at 195 Balham High Road in south London, 33 years ago. Over time, it became the kind of establishment that completes a neighbourhood, that “little place I know”, loved by regulars for its homely preparations of risotto ai funghi and calamari al balsamico, and for how it seemed to embody a quality so elusive in restaurants, and even in life: authenticity.

So it is anyone’s guess how Bucci’s patrons digested the news from Southwark crown court earlier this year that Archetta, the man who up until that point had run their favourite bistro, was also the linchpin in a mammoth smuggling and money-laundering operation for the world’s most powerful and murderously ruthless mafia.