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Twenty-six thousand marijuana plants, clash of the Vibo Valentia clan: the son of the boss Mancuso repents, 18 arrests
Police operation called "Secret Gardens". To control the plantations they used drones. The narcotic had a market value of 20 million
of ALESSIA CANDITO
July 21, 2018
VIBO VALENTIA. The latest unprecedented trade strategy of the Calabrian clans for drug trafficking exploits drones, web and migrants. It is on the web, in fact, that Emanuele Mancuso, thirty year old son of the boss Pantaleone "The Engineer", sailed in search of the best seeds of hemp, which then bought in huge quantities. Formally everything is regular, because the seeds can be bought for collecting. It is a pity, however, that the young scion of the Mancuso thigh, who recently started collaborating with the magistrates, used them to grow 26,000 marijuana plants in huge plantations scattered throughout the Vibonese.
The investigators of the Police Headquarters of Vibo Valentia, led by Andrea Grassi, discovered that with the coordination of the Catanzaro DDA directed by the Chief Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, they reconstructed the entire production chain of cannabis, managing to identify all the characters involved. Together with Mancuso, 17 people (8 in prison, 10 at home) have been involved in handcuffs. They have been accused in various ways of having been part of the supply chain. Another 21 are investigated on the loose. The 18 sites of a company specialized in the sale of Indian hemp seeds, scattered between Alessandria, Brescia, Caltanissetta, Catanzaro, Chieti, Genoa, Imperia, Lecce, Milan, Naples, Salerno and Savona are searched and seized.
"The investigation was almost defined and closed - explains the Chief Prosecutor Gratteri - when the stroke of luck arrived, the repentance of Emanuele Mancuso". About a month ago, the engineer's son, already in jail for extortion, asked to speak with the magistrates and since then he would have filled verbal reports. An absolute novelty for the powerful and up to now impenetrable family of 'ndrangheta of Limbadi, which has never counted with a collaborator in its ranks. "For this reason - say the investigators - Emanuele Mancuso's collaboration could be precious".
Exuberant character, became known not only for the criminal enterprises but also for the angry phone calls with which he used to storm the local newspapers to contest this or that article, Mancuso was born and raised within the clan. And he is aware of the structure, balance and roles within the numerous quarrelsome family of 'ndrangheta, long divided between those who invoke a low-profile and low-profile policy that does not disturb business and those who do not disdain striking actions, such as the car bomb that on 9 April killed Matteo Vinci.
Deposits that Mancuso jr knows perfectly well, as well as knowing about the lucrative business of the clan, among the pioneers of international drug trafficking and today unscrupulous in the policies of reinvestment of the billions earned by transporting coca through the oceans. Even Emanuele had chosen to engage in the traditional "family business", however, cutting out a substantially autonomous business sector in the field of light drugs, carried out with an "innovative" method.
"He's a specialist - says Gratteri - I've never seen one more experienced than him in marijuana cultivation. He looks like an agronomist, he also knows all the techniques of indoor cultivation ". And he had managed to invent a real "industrial" production chain of grass, taking advantage - says Gratteri - "of the hypocrisies permitted by the current law". The seeds were bought on-line on the portal hempatia.com, now blocked, specialized in the sale "for collectors", and connected to a distribution network of over 18 stores scattered throughout Italy.
It is from there - investigators have discovered - that the seeds were then used in six gigantic hidden fields between Nicotera, Ioppolo and Capistrano, where marijuana plants were grown capable of producing over 2 million doses of "grass". Foreign farm workers were involved in the care, management and irrigation of the plantations, many of them coming from the San Ferdinando tent.
This is a novelty for the Calabrian clans, who generally have always entrusted the supervision of "cultivations" to their own low laborers. A task that is not particularly prestigious, but criminally risky, for this - explain the investigators - entrusted to laborers without rights and sometimes even without documents. Mancuso and his people, though not physically present, watched over their precious crops, thanks to some drones that flew to control both workers and crops.
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