'Ndrangheta, the "primroses" found by investigators around the world
by Arcangelo Badolati — April 28, 2023


International airports, naval ports, patrician palaces in the heart of European cities, South American and Caribbean luxury resorts, Portuguese villas overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, farms in the Colombian plains, penthouses in North American skyscrapers: the story of the capture of Calabrian "primroses" seems imagined by Ian Fleming.
Over the past twenty years, fugitives from the 'Ndrangheta have in fact been chased around the world: from Indonesia to Canada, via Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, France, Colombia and Argentina. To find them, the Italian police have followed complex paths, spying on Facebook and Istagram; intercepting satellite phones and cash flows by carrying out a constant work of connection with the police forces of all continents.
Peppino Piromalli historic boss of the local mafia "it's the hardest thing!". He knew it well: it was a carabinieri captain, Gilberto Murgia , who tracked him down in his hiding place back in the 80s, after months and months of strenuous searches, endless tailings and exhausting stakeouts carried out in the heart of the almost inviolable Piana di Gioia Tauro. The "picciotteria" has always known how to protect its heads well and for a long time in the past: just think that the man who remained in hiding more than anyone else in Italy was Michelangelo Franconieri , from Rizziconi, who remained a "bird of the woods" for 43 years, from 1958 to 2001.
Now, however, things have changed: the "hunters" of the state have more means and, thanks to the "I-Can" project wanted by the deputy chief of police, Vittorio Rizzi, greater possibilities for coordination and exchange of information with the investigative units of the other Villages.
The change of pace is proved by a series of events: 43 wanted men handcuffed in three years. Names and surnames chase each other in the Viminale list. To retrace it, let's start with Antonio Strangio , 32, from San Luca, a fugitive for seven years, who ended up in handcuffs in Bali, Indonesia, on February 3 last. He was returning to Australia, where he had been living since 2016, after an exotic vacation. He is suspected of drug trafficking.
In Saint Etienne, on the other hand, a few hours earlier the last great fugitive from Upper Calabria had ended up in handcuffs, Edgardo Greco , a multiple murderer and life sentence from Cosenza who had been in hiding since October 2006. He lived as a cook in a restaurant-pizzeria owned by of a Sicilian. As a young man he had become famous for having tried to kill the Bruttian boss Franco Pino in prison ; his fame had then grown with his participation, in 1991, in the assassination of brothers Stefano and Giuseppe Bartolomeo .
2022 was a particularly lucky year in the search for fugitives. In Buenos Aires, in October, Carmine Alfonso Maiorano was identified and handcuffed, 68 years old, from Cassano, under investigation for international drug trafficking and untraceable since 2015. The sixty-eight year old was located thanks to the excessive use he made of Facebook, using false profiles. He used a fictitious identity but chatted with old "companies" and sybaritic friends and the circumstance cost him his arrest.
On the other side of the world and a stone's throw from us, again last year, two more shots by the police forces: in fact, Vittorio Raso was arrested in Spain (in Castelfidelis in June 2022) originally from Piana di Gioia but residing in the province of Turin and Mario Palamara(Fuengirola - Malaga October 2022) originally from Melito Porto Salvo. Raso, a few months later, decided to collaborate with the Italian investigating judiciary by revealing the names and functions of all the narcos involved in the great cocaine tour destined to flood the Piedmontese squares.
In March of the previous year, in Portugal, the fugitive of Francesco Pelle, known as "Ciccio Pakistan" , a life sentence from San Luca involved in the feud which culminated in the Duisburg massacre, had ended. And again in 2021, but in the homeland of Samba, Rocco Morabito, known as "Tamunga" , from Africo,
was recaptured first in Uruguay in 2017 and, after a sensational escape from Montevideo prison, resumed in Brazil. In carioca land they had finished with freedom as wellVincenzo Macrì , from Siderno, son of "Don Antonio", blocked in 2017 in the San Paolo airport as he was about to board a flight to Caracas; and Nicola Assisi, drug trafficker from Grimaldi (Cosenza) active in Piedmont, discovered in a residence in Praia Grande along the coast of San Paolo, in July 2019. With him was his son, Patrick, an irreplaceable companion on the run "golden", set to guard a room full of money. All "grana" earned with drugs.