The Secret Luxembourg Base of Italy’s ’Ndrangheta Mafia
by Cecilia Anesi (IrpiMedia), Giulio Rubino (IrpiMedia), Luc Caregari (Woxx), Jérémie Baruch (Le Monde)
15 February 2021

By the time Santo Rumbo turned up in Luxembourg, he was already deeply enmeshed in the world of the Italian mafia.

At just 31 years old, he’d allegedly risen to one of the highest ranks of the ’Ndrangheta, the vicious Calabrian crime group that is responsible for a good chunk of Europe’s cocaine trade.

So Italian police were more than a little concerned to learn he had moved to the tiny northwestern European nation, where he got involved in a restaurant business along with a group of young migrants from an impoverished Italian village near his hometown of Siderno, in the ’Ndrangheta’s heartland.

The intensely hierarchical and clannish ’Ndrangheta have fanned out across the world from their home base in southern Italy, often using family-based chain migration to get footholds in new markets.

But the town of Siderno, on the sunny Ionian coast, is still the capital of their global narco-empire. There, the mighty Commisso clan rules over a number of ’Ndrangheta families that are so powerful that their decisions can affect global cocaine prices.

Santo Rumbo’s father, Riccardo, was one of these family leaders, heading the Rumbo-Figliomeni ‘ndrina subgroup.

Read More: https://www.occrp.org/en/openlux/revealed-the-secret-luxembourg-base-of-italys-ndrangheta-mafia