BY VALENTINA ACCARDO
- Police conducted a huge dragnet against a Calabrian mafia clan operating in northern Italy on Wednesday, arresting 110 people and seizing more than 100 million euros ($114 million), underlining the mob's spread to the wealthy north.
About half of those arrested are accused of being members of the 'Ndrangheta, a traditional organized crime group from Calabria in Italy's deep south. The Cutro clan first put down roots in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna in 1982, investigators said.
The arrests for mafia membership, extortion, usury, money laundering, and corruption follow more than four years of investigation, uncovering a vast web of business interests, mostly in construction and real estate.
"This investigation is extremely important and without precedent, and it signals a turning point in fighting the clans in Emilia," Italy's chief anti-mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti told reporters. "Nothing will ever be the same."
The dragnet follows a major operation in Rome last week in which police broke up a 'Ndrangheta drug ring with links to Colombian cocaine producers. As the power of the Sicilian Mafia has faded, the estimated 150 'Ndrangheta clans have grown in strength by becoming some of Europe's biggest cocaine importers.
With Italian businesses struggling to survive six years of on-off recession, mafia groups have found fertile ground to launder criminal proceeds in northern Italy and in the capital, areas not normally associated with organized crime.
Seven of those sought for arrest on Wednesday remain at large, police said.
Businesses run by the clan won public contracts to remove debris after the 2012 earthquakes in Emilia that killed more than 20 people, Bologna prosecutor Roberto Alfonso said. An entire neighborhood of 200 apartments was among the assets seized.
At least six current and former members of law enforcement, two local politicians, businessmen, financial consultants, lawyers and a journalist are among those accused of favoring the clan, prosecutors said, and five mayoral elections may have been fixed. The investigation continues, Alfonso said.
"This mafia clan was all business," Roberti said. "And it modeled itself to reflect the reality of the territory where it operated in order to blend in."
(Writing by Steve Scherer; editing by Ralph Boulton)