Also, I really think thier ascendancy started with this key bust....



Meanwhile, Caruana organised a network that smuggled eleven metric tonnes of cocaine to Italy from 1991-94. Caruana brought together the cocaine producers of the Colombian Cartels with the Italian distributors, six 'Ndrangheta families from Calabria. At the time the Cuntrera-Caruana family was labeled as "the fly-wheel of the drug trade and the indispensable link between suppliers and distributors."[2]

The investigation, code-named Operation Cartagine, started when the police seized 5,497 kilos of cocaine (a European record at the time) in March 1994 in Turin. A year later the Turin Prosecutors Office presented the indictment. The operation neutralized the most important supply-line of narcotics to Europe, investigators claim


A series of botched shipments, plus Riina going to war with the state, and that big DEA bust on Domenico Mannino, and the sicilians.....

And yet still, I dont think they were dominant until both the Secondigliano Alliance, and the DiLauro clans went to war....