Top anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy Nicola Gratteri says that recent information from operations against the ‘Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia it Italy show it is quickly spreading in the United States. The Ndrangheta is now one of the world’s most powerful organized crime groups and making obscene amounts of money by controlling the drug trade in Europe. But now the Calabrian mafia is becoming intrenched in Canada , Australia , and the United States with little trouble from law enforcement.

“Nicola Gratteri”

Gratteri says the Ndrangheta is particularly operating in the United States in New York and Florida. A new route in the Ndrangheta drug trade has been uncovered and it is centered in New York City built around the ability to gain access to cocaine shipped in by the Mexican drug cartels. Many mob insiders also believe that the Ndrangheta clans in New York and Quebec Canada are responsible for the Mafia war in Canada against the Rizzuto crime family. The Montreal mafia war is over control of the drug trade there and has claimed the lives of the son and father of reputed Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto and former Bonanno crime family boss Salvatore Montagna among others. It is believed that Montagna aligned himself with the Ndrangheta in a play to take power of the underworld in Montreal from the Rizzuto family.

Gratteri says that the war against the ‘Ndrahgheta is unwinnable. The Ndrangheta has a large number of clever and determined members who’s motto is secrecy. They don’t have a godfather or single leader at the top like other standard mafia groups so no arrest can can really threaten to bring down or cripple the organization. Also it may be even tougher for the United States to battle the Ndrangheta at this time because resources to fight organized crime have been limited in a effort to concentrate more on terrorism.





When Nicola Gratteri, one of the most respected anti-mafia prosecutors in the world, landed in Rome last Friday, he had just found out about a plot to kill him.

A few days earlier, a mafia boss-turned-state witness had confessed that a prominent family belonging to the Calabrian ‘ndrangheta—the richest and most powerful crime organization in Italy, and perhaps in the world—had recently purchased 36 pounds of plastic explosives, with which they’d planned to blow up Gratteri and his security escort. According to the Mafioso’s testimony, the explosives had already arrived in Calabria, the region at the toe of Italy’s boot that serves as a jumping-off point for Sicily.

This is not the first time the 46-year-old Gratteri has received such a threat. In the 1990s, an unknown assailant fired shots at his fiancée’s door, then phoned her with a warning: “Don’t marry Gratteri because you’ll marry a dead man.” In 2005, authorities intercepted a conversation between a mafia boss and his son-in-law that revealed how deeply the crime syndicates hate the prosecutor. “Do we have to blow up the security as well?” asked the son-in-law. “Yes,” the boss answered. “Why all this blood?” asked the son-in-law. “Because he ruined us; he brought disasters,” said the boss. Shortly thereafter, the boss was arrested.

The ‘ndrangheta were apparently so intent upon bumping off Gratteri that they were willing to risk a subsequent crackdown by the State, says a qualified source in the Calabrian district attorney’s office. “They know that blowing up a prosecutor would force the State to react, as when Judges [Giovanni] Falcone and [Paolo] Borsellino were killed by the Sicilians,” says the source. “However, this [latest death] threat seems real.”

The constant threat of revenge from the ‘ndrangheta requires Gratteri to employ 15 bodyguards and constantly move locations. “I go to sleep around 10 p.m. every night and wake up at 2:30 am. That’s my favorite moment of the day—it’s quiet, and nobody bothers me. That’s when I do the real work, until 6 or 7 a.m.,” he says. “The rest of the day, I spend trying to avoid attacks. In this position, one has to be very careful—you have way more enemies than friends, and not only among the Mafiosi.”

While the prosecutor seems to genuinely enjoy his profession—“I love this job with all my heart … when I got married, I asked the priest, who happened to be my uncle, to hurry, because I wanted to go back to work”—and while his mood is generally upbeat, Gatteri says the lifestyle has taken its toll. “I’ve been disappointed so many times by the betrayal of people close to me that now it is very hard for someone to really get to me,” he says.

“I don’t spend a second in Calabria without security, and even then, I know that the day the ‘ndrangheta decides to kill you, there’s no way you can avoid it.”

Born to a poor farming family and raised in the city of Reggio Calabria, Gratteri grew up with many kids who ultimately became ‘ndrangheta members--but he says that he always had a clear idea of what was right or wrong. His father “taught me to always share what I have with others,” Gratteri says. “Every winter, we killed two pigs: one for us, and one to feed our neighbors, who were much poorer than we were. They didn’t even have shoes to wear.”



Later, when forced to arrest some of his childhood playmates who had gone into the ‘ndrangheta, Gratteria says simply: “It was a difficult thing to do, but there was no other possible choice.” Some of them, he says, “were clearly going to become Mafiosi: they were rude, mean, and they had been breathing in the ‘ndrangheta culture all their lives, at home.”

Family, Gratteri believes, is the one element that makes a difference in a child’s trajectory. “If I grew up in an ‘ndrangheta family, today I would be a capo-mafia,” he says. “No matter what your nature, kids always try to emulate their parents. For me, this meant work hard, get good grades in school, respect the teacher and help others. I have never seen the child of a Mafioso become a normal person.”

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...a-gratteri.html

The only law enforcement worried enough is the Carabinieri. They've tried to warn the Australian law enforcement recently with hardly any reply. It seems that the 'Ndrangheta are gaining more influence than the American LCN considering over the past 5-6 decades the law enforcement in North America have paid more attention to the Mafia than any other criminal organisation.

There's no denying that 'Ndrangheta is growing in strength while American LCN is seemingly a shadow of its former self. But I think this prosecutor is blowing a little smoke. They all do.

If you're talking about more influence in the U.S., no. The Italian OC groups, particularly the Sicilians, and increasingly the Calabrians, have their presence in the northeast and Florida but it's still a fraction of what it was. Actual cases involving these groups in the U.S. are few and far between. While heroin once came from across the Atlantic through New York, now it's cocaine coming through New York across the Atlantic. But that's a relatively new thing. The Italian groups seem to launder their money in the U.S. more than anything else.

Perfect synopsis, Ivy .

Heroin came from across the Atlantic through Montreal and other parts of Canada, destined for New York.

True, but back in the day, New York was also a way station to other cities in the U.S.

Gioiosa Cafe in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn is an alleged Calabrian "hotspot". I'm currently looking for some surveillance pics of reputed ndranghetisti hanging outside of that bar. I saw it two years ago on a well written article of Il Corriere Della Sera.

I'll post them as soon as I find them.

Interesting post Strax. Perhaps this is the biggest contributing factor for the increase of Calabrian/Southern Italian organized crime. Many 'Ndrangheta members are a born into a financially scorned background/family. The majority live poverty (with a large amount of siblings and family relatives.) And with little support from those financially endowed 'Ndrangheta members are able to exploit other Calabrians and Southern Italians and recruit members who had no other way to succeed other than joining 'Ndrangheta clans or other various criminal enterprises.

Mexican Drug Cartels Join Forces with Italian Mafia to Supply Cocaine to Europe
By Andrew O'Reilly
June 21, 2012

The Sicilian port city of Palermo has for centuries been an entry point for goods – both legal and illegal – coming into Europe. Home to the notorious Sicilian Mafia, Italian officials recently unearthed information that Palermo’s black market, along with other Italian ports, is used by Mexico’s ruthless drug cartels as a conduit to bring drugs to the European market.

A 10-year investigation by Italian authorities earlier this year revealed ties between Italian groups and Mexican drug traffickers to move shipments of cocaine across the Atlantic Ocean.

The revelations by Italian authorities is just the most recent indication of Mexican cartels expanding their reach across the Atlantic as the Colombian drug trafficking organizations have slowly been fazed out of the trade.

"Over the last 20 years the Mexicans have really taken over," said Shannon O’Neil, a Douglas Dillon Fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations. "Instead of working for the Colombians, the Colombians are now working for the Mexicans."

The Italian-Mexican connection was allegedly spearheaded by Elio and Bruno Gerardi, two Italian brothers based out of Monterrey who shipped hundreds of tons of cocaine on behalf of Cosa Nostra inside of industrial ovens. While the two brothers remain at large, a number of key figures linked to the Italian organized crime group are in custody.

"The investigation into the Gerardi operation demonstrates the degree to which Mexico has become a vital actor not merely in the U.S. cocaine supply chain, but in the global drug trade," wrote Patrick Corcoran of the Latin American security website, InSightCrime.org. "For a gang dedicated to moving South American cocaine to Europe, there was no inherent need for a Mexican connection, but the centrality of Mexican traffickers to the global trade drew the Gerardis to forge links with Mexican traffickers as early as 2002."

Also, with a kilogram of cocaine estimated at over $63,000 in Italy, compared to the average price of between $28,000 and $38,000 in New York, the cartels see Europe as a lucrative and untapped market.

"The Mexican cartels have gone global," O’Neil said. "The question is who will take over in Europe, in Russia."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) recently announced documented links between Mexican cartels and criminal groups in Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria. The Sinaloa Cartel is also known to have ties not only in Europe but throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australia, where a booming trade has developed in the country’s cities.

"The U.S. is not the only game in town," said Rusty Payne, a DEA spokesman, adding that tougher tactics from both the Mexican and U.S. governments have led Mexican cartels to look elsewhere.

"Europe is crazy now with coke," Payne said.

Last August, the Mexican weekly magazine M Semanal reported a sharp uptick in links between the Zetas and Italy’s ‘Nhdrangheta organized crime group.

The ‘Nhdrangheta is an organized crime family similar to the Sicilian mafia and based out of the Calabria region of Italy. It is estimated that the 'Ndrangheta earns between $30 billion and $50 billion annually, mostly from drug trafficking and pirated merchandise.

While not as infamous as the Cosa Nostra is in the United States, the ‘Nhdrangheta – which operates through small, individual groups instead of the mafia’s pyramid structure – is arguably more important to Europe’s drug trade as 80 percent of the cocaine entering the continent’s market coming through docks in Calabria, Italian officials estimated back in 2004.

Unlike in their home country and in parts of the United States, the Mexican cartels are in unfamiliar territory in Europe and need a guide to foray them in the drug trade across the Atlantic, O’Neil said.

"The Mexican cartels are on new turf and need to learn the lay of the land," O’Neil added. "The Italians are established and have well-connected networks to aid the Mexicans."

Ties between the ‘Nhdrangheta and the Mexican cartels date back a number of years, as a 2008 joint operation by U.S., Italian, Mexican and Guatemalan authorities called “Project Reckoning” led to the arrest of 175 individuals on charges related to internal drug trafficking. Despite the seized cocaine being shipped from South America via New York, the Gulf and Zetas (then part of the same organization) were allegedly the key suppliers.

"The ties between the Zetas and the 'Ndrangheta are the most frequent example of Mexicans and Italians cooperating, even beyond Reckoning," Corcoran said.

While still known for their ultra-violent tactics, dealing with the Italian organized crime groups also appears to have slightly shifted the Zetas’ operational model toward that of their European counterparts.

The Zetas now use tactics such as extraction from the local population, extortion and diversifying their products like the Italians do, Cororan said.

"Diversification helps keep the profits up because if [the authorities] crack down on drugs, the cartels have other cash outlets," O’Neil added.
With worries that Mexico’s drug violence will spill over the border into the United States and possibly the new European markets, O’Neill said that Europeans should be relieved that so far the bloodshed has remained primarily in Mexico.

"We’ve heard wiretaps where cartel members say don’t kill anybody in the U.S.," Payne said. "I would be shocked if the same wasn’t happening in Europe."

The European cocaine demand, which has risen dramatically in the last decade, paired with burgeoning trafficking routes through West Africa and Europe, has allowed Italian organized crime groups to comfortably climb in bed with the Mexican cartels.

"They’re involved in drug trafficking and they’re getting it from the bad guys down south," Payne said.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/20...ine-for-europe/

Do you think 'Ndrangheta maybe working with La Cosa Nostra? How big are their crews in NY and Florida?

Except for a few Genovese associates who were caught up in the "Project Reckoning" bust a few years ago, I'm not aware of any examples. According to the FBI's website, the 'Ndrangheta has 100-200 members and associates in New York and Florida.