Ndrangheta

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MarcoW
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Ndrangheta

Post by MarcoW »

What you guys think, which Ndrangheta ndrina is the most Powerful and richest? I have read sometimes the Nirta ndrina is the most Powerful. Or Maybe the Piromalli?
scagghiuni
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by scagghiuni »

i think piromalli, de stefano-tegano, condello and mancuso are the top, there are several other powerful anyway
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by MarcoW »

You think the Piromallis are more Powerful than the Clans from San Luca? The Pelle ndrina are also very Powerful.
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by Etna »

I need to read more into these clans...I always skip Calabria in the DIA reports.
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by CabriniGreen »

The Pesce and Bellocco are as powerful in Gia Tauro as the Piromalli.....the Piromalli lost the Mole clan, I think...maybe they reconciled...

The Alvaro, Ursino, Commisso......


Dont leave out the Barbaro clan.....


https://www.liberastampa.net/droga-sant ... ta-milano/
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by Shellackhead »

Do the Ndrangheta war with each other or with other groups?
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by CabriniGreen »

Reggio Calabria
Drugs - The Holy Alliance between the 'ndrine of San Luca and Platì to the conquest of Milan
By Alessandro Boldrini - Jun 17, 2019



Maxi operation of the Reggio Calabria DDA against international drug trafficking managed by the gangs of the 'Ndrangheta Aspromontana: 31 arrests and dozens of suspects in the countries of Southern Milan. The history of the Skin-Barbarian alliance
17 JUNE 2019

by Alessandro Boldrini

San Luca and Platì. But also Corsico, Buccinasco and Motta Visconti, passing through Holland, Belgium, Ecuador and Colombia.

This is how the map of the international drug trafficking managed by the powerful gangs of the 'Ndrangheta Reggio of San Luca and Platì, in the province of Reggio Calabria, dismantled by the maxi operation Edera del Ros of the carabinieri, which last Thursday 13 June led to the arrest of 31 people (24 in prison and 7 under house arrest).

The suspects, in total, are 58. The operation, coordinated by the deputy prosecutor Giuseppe Lombardo of the Dda of Reggio Calabria, brought to light the criminal interests of some historical families "of the Ionian 'Ndrangheta of Reggio, such as the Pelle Gambazza di San Luca and the Barbaro Castanudi Platì, able to organize a criminal network with other 'Ndrangheta families of the plain of Gioia Tauro and Reggio Calabria in order to plan each segment of the traffic for the importation of cocaine from Ecuador and Colombia, up to the ports of Antwerp, Gioia Tauro and Rotterdam ”, commented the chief prosecutor of Reggio Giovanni Bombardieri.


One of the wiretaps recorded at Giuseppe Pelle's home in Bovalino (Rc)
The investigation takes its first steps starting from some investigative ideas that emerged during the Royal operation in 2010. Between March and April of that year, the investigators intercept a series of meetings in a house in Bovalino in which the landlord participates Giuseppe Pelle (58 year old son of Antonio Pelle Gambazza , progenitor of the homonymous' ndrina who died in 2009); his son Antonio, born in 1987; the son-in-law Giuseppe Barbaro, 33 years old from Platì; the brothers-in-law Pasquale (who died in a car accident on November 14, 2014) and Antonio Barbaro, all belonging to the 'ndrina founded by the boss Ciccio' u Castanu ; as well as Giorgio Macrì, who boasts direct contacts with drug suppliers in South America.

Peppe Gambazza"Having urgent economic needs - reads the ordinance of the investigating judge Antonino Foti - he plans the strategic lines of a cocaine trafficking, whose tactical execution was delegated to third parties".

The latter are Alessandro Manno, 55 years old from Caulonia, "involved to pass the suitcases with the drug to customs controls at the Milan airports" and Domenico Sergi, 32, son of the lifelong boss Ciccio Mbilli and nephew of Antonio Papalia, resident in Buccinasco, which had the task of "safely carrying out the withdrawal and transport of drugs, with cars, directly to Calabria".

However, on April 21, 2010, operation Reale's handcuffs were released for the Pelle family . Twenty days later, on 11 May, Giorgio Macrì, presumed mediator with the narcos, was also arrested for mafia association, and the activity conducted by Manno was interrupted. In the meantime, Domenico Sergi and Giuseppe Barbaro do not stop and on 19 June the investigators seize a load of 22 kilos of cocaine hidden in a truck in Ventimiglia (modified inside the Winner Car body shop in Buccinasco, managed by Anna Sergi, sister di Domenico, and Gennaro Ragosta) from Spain and arrested the two alleged couriers, Tommaso Mazzone, 58, from Corsico, and Manuel Anibal Rodriguez Rengifo, known as Miguel, 35 year old Peruvian living in Motta Visconti.

At this point Sergi, worried about a possible arrest, suspends all activities and makes himself unavailable. The investigations continue and the military identify "a further circuit of subjects linked to Giuseppe Barbaro" formed, among others, by the brothers Antonio and Rosario Musitano, by Francesco Trimboli and by the three brothers Pasquale, Cosimo Francesco and Damiano Calabria, all originally from Platì. And "one of the meeting points of the Platiota 'group' - writes the investigating judge - was identified in the Musipane bakery run by the Musitanos and their families in Corsico", closed due to anti-mafia interdiction and already at the center of the controversy for having organized, with the patronage of the Municipality, the Mammola stocco festival at the end of 2016.



The activity of the alleged Calabrian narcos stops in May 2011 , when Antonio Musitano discovers a bug inside his car. Although the trade in 'quality' marijuana (sold between 5,100 and 5,700 euros per kilo) and coca (up to 42,000 euros per kilo) on the Milanese square is interrupted, however, the investigations go on and the network of names always becomes more dense. According to investigators, in fact, one of the suppliers of the Platiota group is Domenico Ficara of the Sanlucota dei Ciceri family .

By monitoring his movements, the mediation relationships for the purchase of drugs in South America are then reconstructed. The clustersof this criminal network are Consulate Malaspina, Salvatore Di Napoli, but above all Paolo Franco, "or the one who materially maintained relations with the South American component supplying the narcotic" through two fugitives, Domenico Trimboli - alias Alberto Gonzalez Trembol - and Santo Scipione, arrested by the Colombian police respectively on 24 and 27 April 2013.

The two fugitives, explains the investigating judge, plan and organize the import of drugs both in Canada and in Italy thanks to the collaboration of the Colombian Elicier Jorge Bermudez, known as Cuco , which assists both Calabrian groups and some Venetian groups, such as the one formed by the Paduan Antonio Bastianello, Antonio Maniero and Ferdinando Scremin.

The development of the investigative activity around drug suppliers then leads to the identification of a further group of drug traffickers, which operates both directly in Italy and from Colombia and Ecuador, passing through the ports of Northern Europe, such as Antwerp and Rotterdam.

The group, according to the Dda, is made up of the brothers Antonio (alias Il Lungo ), Francesco ( Il Corto ) and Domenico Strangio, with the latter acting as spokesperson with the Rosarnese Giuseppe Bellocco ( Crodino piccolo ), Marco Arcuri and Francesco Franco German.

They are also joined by Domenico Cortese known as Mimmo the butcher , Giuseppe Cortese known as Pino, Luciano and Vittorio Cordì, Silvio Gangemi and Pasquale Zangari, believed to be co-financiers of the illegal activities. Finally, the Strangio-Bellocco family can count on the collaboration of a group of South Americans in the Netherlands, led by the Ecuadorian Roberto Fernando Bolivar Contreras Gomez, known as Crodino grande, and by the Colombian son-in-law.


The code language used by two suspects
"Dog", "veterinarian", words broken in half and apparently meaningless syllables.There is a little bit of everything in the code language that suspects used to communicate with each other and to talk business.

A language so cryptic that even they, at times, found it hard to understand: "Unnu you know why I can't tell you anything on the phone ... because how do you speak here ... it seems that we talk about fucking coppola!". In short, the fear of being intercepted is great ("cà semo nu poco sutto ... with the law!"), But sometimes it is the same cryptic language used by the suspects to betray them. “Hey listen, take the dog to the vet. Do you understand? ”Asks Miguel Rodriguez Rengifo shortly after the arrest in Ventimiglia of his companion Valentina Mazzone, born in 1982 of Motta Visconti. "Yes," she replies twice. Apparently all quiet, but for the men of the DDA to listen something is wrong. Perhaps because the phone call between the two takes place at 3:

San Luca and Platì - respectively the heart and brain of the 'Ndrangheta according to the prosecutor of Catanzaro Nicola Gratteri - the world capitals of international drug trafficking are reconfirmed, as well as the central economic engine of all the affairs of the Calabrian clans on the planet.

And to understand the importance of the Pelle-Barbaro association that links the two Aspromonte centers, it is good to take a step back almost ten years. It is August 19, 2009 and in the church of San Luca the most important marriage in the Calabrian mafia history is celebrated, namely the one between Elisa Pelle, daughter of Giuseppe, and Giuseppe Barbaro, son of the deceased Pasquale.

The guests are many, many. So many that the newlyweds have to organize the reception in two different restaurants, twenty kilometers from each other, and are forced to commute between Platì and Ardore Marina to greet everyone. An appointment that is absolutely forbidden to miss, given that the opportunity, in addition to establishing and reinforcing the link between the two gangs, is also good to assign the boss Domenico Oppedisano the position of crime boss.


“They wanted to have a power marriage, to show that they are strong, that they have come from all over. Did you understand what they wanted to do? ”, Said Oppedisano's son, Raffaele, to his father Domenico in an interception. Yes, because at that wedding there were also the men of the police forces, who for years had followed the bosses step by step.

Capibastone who will then end up in handcuffs in the maxi roundup “They wanted to have a power marriage, to show that they are strong, that they have come from all over. Did you understand what they wanted to do? ”, Said Oppedisano's son, Raffaele, to his father Domenico in an interception. Yes, because at that wedding there were also the men of the police forces, who for years had followed the bosses step by step. . Capibastone who will then end up in handcuffs in the maxi roundupCrime-Infinito of 2010 and gradually in subsequent ones. Everything else is history.


The bosses filmed by the carabinieri during a summit at the Sanctuary of the Madonna di Polsi in San Luca (Rc)


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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by CabriniGreen »

“’U SPARITU” ARRESTED11 maggio 2017 - 11:53
Cocaine Boss Rocco Barbaro Arrested
di Cesare Giuzzi


The boss “‘U sparitu” (“the disappearing man”) was not armed. Protected as he was in his house in Via XXIV Maggio, in the heart of Plati, with ears and eyes all over the town, he hardly needed to be.

Crowds of people filled the streets when the crack Carabinieri unit, Cacciatori di Calabria, along with local officers from Locri escorted Barbaro from his run-down three-storey apartment block.

The whole town was there to pay their respects to the boss as he was bundled into the car that would take him to prison. Nobody needed to ask who the greying man was, wearing a black T-shirt and a brown leather jacket, its sleeves rolled down to cover the shame of being handcuffed.

Everyone knows Rocco Barbaro in Platì, if for no other reason than that he is the son of the crown prince of Calabria’s mafia – the ‘ndrangheta –, Francesco Barbaro, known as Ciccio ‘u castanu, in reference to his brown hair. Now 90, this head of the most important gang, or ‘ndrina, in Aspromonte, is currently serving a jail sentence in a high-security prison in Parma.

Leather jacket and bar in central Milan
However, some may remember noting the somewhat nondescript face of this well-groomed 51-year-old man elsewhere, hundreds of miles away from this sheep farming community in the heart of Calabria’s Aspromonte.

To be precise, in Corso Europa, in central Milan, just a stone’s throw from the cathedral, possibly wearing the same brown leather jacket now concealing his handcuffs. This was how he was captured in a photo shot by Carabinieri investigators in Milan in 2013, hitching up his trousers as he walked out of his bar, Vecchia Milano.

Rocco Barbaro, born in Platì on 30 June 1965, and one of the 30 most dangerous men in Italy according to the Interior Ministry, had been in hiding for a year and a half after an arrest warrant had been issued in his name for false registration of assets and mafia association. Investigations in fact centred around the bar and tobacconist’s in the heart of Milan, acquired by Barbaro with the help of dummy purchasers.

That two places so far from each other – one the hub of Italy’s economy and finance, the other the impenetrable heart of organised crime – should be linked in this way is indicative of the immense power of the Calabrian mafia, bringing together shepherds, accountants, gangsters and not-so-white white collars.

This was in 2013, and at the time Rocco Barbaro was working in a tyre centre in Via Toscanelli in Buccinasco, where he had moved in July 2012 after being released from Piacenza prison, where he had been serving a 15-year sentence for drug trafficking.

Bar in the shadow of the cathedral
A few months earlier, on 28 November 2012, the Carabinieri had intercepted an extraordinary conversation between the Papalia family’s right-hand man in Buccinasco, Agostino Catanzariti, and another affiliate, Michele Grillo (both arrested in Operation Platino): “This man here is the boss of the all the bosses! By rights, he is the boss of all bosses in the area,” explained Catanzariti. ‘U sparitu — a nickname he shares with his brother Giuseppe, also known as Charly, who has been in hiding for 14 years — was living at the time in Via Lecco in Buccinasco, and according to Catanzariti is a member of the Vangelo (“Gospel”), a high-ranking group within the ‘ndrangheta. His son Francesco, 27, is also one of the select few: “He was taken under the wing of the late Nunzio Novella [at the time head of the criminal organisation in Lombardy. Ed.], and made a full member of the Vangelo when he turned 18.”

According to investigators, Rocco Barbaro was at the time the new head of the ‘ndrangheta in Lombardy, a position he had assumed by birth right, being the heir to the most important criminal family in Calabria.

When the Corriere reported the news in January 2014, the mayor of Buccinasco, Giambattista Maiorano, wrote to justice minister Anna Maria Cancellieri expressing his concern over Barbaro’s release.

A few weeks later, the 51-year-old decided to leave Lombardy and go back to Platì, to wait for the hubbub to die down. Meanwhile, however, through his nephew Antonio, Rocco Barbaro and his son Francesco purchased the Vecchia Milano bar in Corso Europa. Also involved were Fortunato Danilo Paonessa, 43, from Messina but with links to the Pesce-Bellocco gang in Gioia Tauro; Domenico Martorano, 38, from Reggio Calabria; and the 38-year-old Raffaele Greco from Vibo Valentia.

Today, Greco’s cousin, Ivan Marcello, 34, from Sant’Onofrio near Vibo Valentia is at the cash desk. The bar is open for business as usual, and has never been closed down or seized by Anti-mafia prosecutors. Carabinieri investigations, now led by Lieutenant Colonel Michele Miulli, managed to reconstruct the corporate web that linked the bar to the gang from Platì.

At first, the investigating magistrate issued a detention order solely for the lesser offence of the false registration of assets, with the charge of mafia association added after the state prosecutor’s office had appealed to the Supreme Court. As it happened, when officers went to his home to arrest Barbaro, he wasn’t there. Apparently he had managed to disappear – true to his nickname – just a few minutes before the Carabinieri arrived.

Homage to Sergeant Marino
This marked the beginning of a period of hiding in the mountains of Aspromonte, something of a family tradition. The carabinieri, led by Lieutenant Colonel Pasqualino Toscani, commander of the Locri force, arrived at Barbaro’s house at lunchtime.

The table was laid for the family, including his four children and six grandchildren, his mother and his wife, Carmine Maria Papalia, 46, who is the niece of Domenico, Antonio and Rocco Papalia, the boss of Buccinasco released on Friday from Secondigliano prison in Naples after serving a 26-year sentence. The “aristocratic” credentials of ‘u sparitu are further bolstered, as if they needed to be, by his alliance with the powerful Pelle family from San Luca through his sister, Marianna, 50, who is married to Giuseppe Pelle, the heir of boss ‘Ntoni Gambazza.

When the carabinieri entered the house, breaking down the door with a battering ram, Rocco Barbaro tried to escape by the stairs and then up to the roof, only to find officers waiting for him.

At that point, he gave himself up, congratulating the senior officer as tradition dictates, and told his mother Elisabetta to put on some coffee for the Carabinieri. “We managed to bypass the gang’s tight control of the territory,” explained Lieutenant Colonel Toscani, “and to do so by day, in the centre of the town, was an extremely complex operation.

Anyone who is familiar with the area knows how impenetrable it is”. He concluded with a dedication to Sergeant Antonino Marino, a carabiniere from Platì killed on 9 September 1990 in Bovalino. He was shot by Rocco’s father, Ciccio ‘u castanu, who was sentenced to life for the murder together with the Milan-based boss Antonio Papalia. “This success is for him, in memory of a fine carabiniere officer”.
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by CabriniGreen »

CabriniGreen wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 4:55 am “’U SPARITU” ARRESTED11 maggio 2017 - 11:53
Cocaine Boss Rocco Barbaro Arrested
di Cesare Giuzzi


The boss “‘U sparitu” (“the disappearing man”) was not armed. Protected as he was in his house in Via XXIV Maggio, in the heart of Plati, with ears and eyes all over the town, he hardly needed to be.

Crowds of people filled the streets when the crack Carabinieri unit, Cacciatori di Calabria, along with local officers from Locri escorted Barbaro from his run-down three-storey apartment block.

The whole town was there to pay their respects to the boss as he was bundled into the car that would take him to prison. Nobody needed to ask who the greying man was, wearing a black T-shirt and a brown leather jacket, its sleeves rolled down to cover the shame of being handcuffed.

Everyone knows Rocco Barbaro in Platì, if for no other reason than that he is the son of the crown prince of Calabria’s mafia – the ‘ndrangheta –, Francesco Barbaro, known as Ciccio ‘u castanu, in reference to his brown hair. Now 90, this head of the most important gang, or ‘ndrina, in Aspromonte, is currently serving a jail sentence in a high-security prison in Parma.

Leather jacket and bar in central Milan
However, some may remember noting the somewhat nondescript face of this well-groomed 51-year-old man elsewhere, hundreds of miles away from this sheep farming community in the heart of Calabria’s Aspromonte.

To be precise, in Corso Europa, in central Milan, just a stone’s throw from the cathedral, possibly wearing the same brown leather jacket now concealing his handcuffs. This was how he was captured in a photo shot by Carabinieri investigators in Milan in 2013, hitching up his trousers as he walked out of his bar, Vecchia Milano.

Rocco Barbaro, born in Platì on 30 June 1965, and one of the 30 most dangerous men in Italy according to the Interior Ministry, had been in hiding for a year and a half after an arrest warrant had been issued in his name for false registration of assets and mafia association. Investigations in fact centred around the bar and tobacconist’s in the heart of Milan, acquired by Barbaro with the help of dummy purchasers.

That two places so far from each other – one the hub of Italy’s economy and finance, the other the impenetrable heart of organised crime – should be linked in this way is indicative of the immense power of the Calabrian mafia, bringing together shepherds, accountants, gangsters and not-so-white white collars.

This was in 2013, and at the time Rocco Barbaro was working in a tyre centre in Via Toscanelli in Buccinasco, where he had moved in July 2012 after being released from Piacenza prison, where he had been serving a 15-year sentence for drug trafficking.

Bar in the shadow of the cathedral
A few months earlier, on 28 November 2012, the Carabinieri had intercepted an extraordinary conversation between the Papalia family’s right-hand man in Buccinasco, Agostino Catanzariti, and another affiliate, Michele Grillo (both arrested in Operation Platino): “This man here is the boss of the all the bosses! By rights, he is the boss of all bosses in the area,” explained Catanzariti. ‘U sparitu — a nickname he shares with his brother Giuseppe, also known as Charly, who has been in hiding for 14 years — was living at the time in Via Lecco in Buccinasco, and according to Catanzariti is a member of the Vangelo (“Gospel”), a high-ranking group within the ‘ndrangheta. His son Francesco, 27, is also one of the select few: “He was taken under the wing of the late Nunzio Novella [at the time head of the criminal organisation in Lombardy. Ed.], and made a full member of the Vangelo when he turned 18.”

According to investigators, Rocco Barbaro was at the time the new head of the ‘ndrangheta in Lombardy, a position he had assumed by birth right, being the heir to the most important criminal family in Calabria.

When the Corriere reported the news in January 2014, the mayor of Buccinasco, Giambattista Maiorano, wrote to justice minister Anna Maria Cancellieri expressing his concern over Barbaro’s release.

A few weeks later, the 51-year-old decided to leave Lombardy and go back to Platì, to wait for the hubbub to die down. Meanwhile, however, through his nephew Antonio, Rocco Barbaro and his son Francesco purchased the Vecchia Milano bar in Corso Europa. Also involved were Fortunato Danilo Paonessa, 43, from Messina but with links to the Pesce-Bellocco gang in Gioia Tauro; Domenico Martorano, 38, from Reggio Calabria; and the 38-year-old Raffaele Greco from Vibo Valentia.

Today, Greco’s cousin, Ivan Marcello, 34, from Sant’Onofrio near Vibo Valentia is at the cash desk. The bar is open for business as usual, and has never been closed down or seized by Anti-mafia prosecutors. Carabinieri investigations, now led by Lieutenant Colonel Michele Miulli, managed to reconstruct the corporate web that linked the bar to the gang from Platì.

At first, the investigating magistrate issued a detention order solely for the lesser offence of the false registration of assets, with the charge of mafia association added after the state prosecutor’s office had appealed to the Supreme Court. As it happened, when officers went to his home to arrest Barbaro, he wasn’t there. Apparently he had managed to disappear – true to his nickname – just a few minutes before the Carabinieri arrived.

Homage to Sergeant Marino
This marked the beginning of a period of hiding in the mountains of Aspromonte, something of a family tradition. The carabinieri, led by Lieutenant Colonel Pasqualino Toscani, commander of the Locri force, arrived at Barbaro’s house at lunchtime.

The table was laid for the family, including his four children and six grandchildren, his mother and his wife, Carmine Maria Papalia, 46, who is the niece of Domenico, Antonio and Rocco Papalia, the boss of Buccinasco released on Friday from Secondigliano prison in Naples after serving a 26-year sentence. The “aristocratic” credentials of ‘u sparitu are further bolstered, as if they needed to be, by his alliance with the powerful Pelle family from San Luca through his sister, Marianna, 50, who is married to Giuseppe Pelle, the heir of boss ‘Ntoni Gambazza.

When the carabinieri entered the house, breaking down the door with a battering ram, Rocco Barbaro tried to escape by the stairs and then up to the roof, only to find officers waiting for him.

At that point, he gave himself up, congratulating the senior officer as tradition dictates, and told his mother Elisabetta to put on some coffee for the Carabinieri. “We managed to bypass the gang’s tight control of the territory,” explained Lieutenant Colonel Toscani, “and to do so by day, in the centre of the town, was an extremely complex operation.

Anyone who is familiar with the area knows how impenetrable it is”. He concluded with a dedication to Sergeant Antonino Marino, a carabiniere from Platì killed on 9 September 1990 in Bovalino. He was shot by Rocco’s father, Ciccio ‘u castanu, who was sentenced to life for the murder together with the Milan-based boss Antonio Papalia. “This success is for him, in memory of a fine carabiniere officer”.
Plati, Lombardy, and Australia.... 3 strongholds...
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by MarcoW »

I think the San Luca Clans are the most Powerful of the World. But i have also often read that the Piromalli are the strongest and richest. What you guys think?

https://www.france24.com/en/20130517-en ... -france-24

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ndrina_La_Maggiore

https://www.wikimafia.it/wiki/index.php ... %27ndrina)
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by MarcoW »

Edit:

In the first Link is a Video.
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Re: Ndrangheta

Post by scagghiuni »

CabriniGreen wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 4:56 am
CabriniGreen wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 4:55 am “’U SPARITU” ARRESTED11 maggio 2017 - 11:53
Cocaine Boss Rocco Barbaro Arrested
di Cesare Giuzzi


The boss “‘U sparitu” (“the disappearing man”) was not armed. Protected as he was in his house in Via XXIV Maggio, in the heart of Plati, with ears and eyes all over the town, he hardly needed to be.

Crowds of people filled the streets when the crack Carabinieri unit, Cacciatori di Calabria, along with local officers from Locri escorted Barbaro from his run-down three-storey apartment block.

The whole town was there to pay their respects to the boss as he was bundled into the car that would take him to prison. Nobody needed to ask who the greying man was, wearing a black T-shirt and a brown leather jacket, its sleeves rolled down to cover the shame of being handcuffed.

Everyone knows Rocco Barbaro in Platì, if for no other reason than that he is the son of the crown prince of Calabria’s mafia – the ‘ndrangheta –, Francesco Barbaro, known as Ciccio ‘u castanu, in reference to his brown hair. Now 90, this head of the most important gang, or ‘ndrina, in Aspromonte, is currently serving a jail sentence in a high-security prison in Parma.

Leather jacket and bar in central Milan
However, some may remember noting the somewhat nondescript face of this well-groomed 51-year-old man elsewhere, hundreds of miles away from this sheep farming community in the heart of Calabria’s Aspromonte.

To be precise, in Corso Europa, in central Milan, just a stone’s throw from the cathedral, possibly wearing the same brown leather jacket now concealing his handcuffs. This was how he was captured in a photo shot by Carabinieri investigators in Milan in 2013, hitching up his trousers as he walked out of his bar, Vecchia Milano.

Rocco Barbaro, born in Platì on 30 June 1965, and one of the 30 most dangerous men in Italy according to the Interior Ministry, had been in hiding for a year and a half after an arrest warrant had been issued in his name for false registration of assets and mafia association. Investigations in fact centred around the bar and tobacconist’s in the heart of Milan, acquired by Barbaro with the help of dummy purchasers.

That two places so far from each other – one the hub of Italy’s economy and finance, the other the impenetrable heart of organised crime – should be linked in this way is indicative of the immense power of the Calabrian mafia, bringing together shepherds, accountants, gangsters and not-so-white white collars.

This was in 2013, and at the time Rocco Barbaro was working in a tyre centre in Via Toscanelli in Buccinasco, where he had moved in July 2012 after being released from Piacenza prison, where he had been serving a 15-year sentence for drug trafficking.

Bar in the shadow of the cathedral
A few months earlier, on 28 November 2012, the Carabinieri had intercepted an extraordinary conversation between the Papalia family’s right-hand man in Buccinasco, Agostino Catanzariti, and another affiliate, Michele Grillo (both arrested in Operation Platino): “This man here is the boss of the all the bosses! By rights, he is the boss of all bosses in the area,” explained Catanzariti. ‘U sparitu — a nickname he shares with his brother Giuseppe, also known as Charly, who has been in hiding for 14 years — was living at the time in Via Lecco in Buccinasco, and according to Catanzariti is a member of the Vangelo (“Gospel”), a high-ranking group within the ‘ndrangheta. His son Francesco, 27, is also one of the select few: “He was taken under the wing of the late Nunzio Novella [at the time head of the criminal organisation in Lombardy. Ed.], and made a full member of the Vangelo when he turned 18.”

According to investigators, Rocco Barbaro was at the time the new head of the ‘ndrangheta in Lombardy, a position he had assumed by birth right, being the heir to the most important criminal family in Calabria.

When the Corriere reported the news in January 2014, the mayor of Buccinasco, Giambattista Maiorano, wrote to justice minister Anna Maria Cancellieri expressing his concern over Barbaro’s release.

A few weeks later, the 51-year-old decided to leave Lombardy and go back to Platì, to wait for the hubbub to die down. Meanwhile, however, through his nephew Antonio, Rocco Barbaro and his son Francesco purchased the Vecchia Milano bar in Corso Europa. Also involved were Fortunato Danilo Paonessa, 43, from Messina but with links to the Pesce-Bellocco gang in Gioia Tauro; Domenico Martorano, 38, from Reggio Calabria; and the 38-year-old Raffaele Greco from Vibo Valentia.

Today, Greco’s cousin, Ivan Marcello, 34, from Sant’Onofrio near Vibo Valentia is at the cash desk. The bar is open for business as usual, and has never been closed down or seized by Anti-mafia prosecutors. Carabinieri investigations, now led by Lieutenant Colonel Michele Miulli, managed to reconstruct the corporate web that linked the bar to the gang from Platì.

At first, the investigating magistrate issued a detention order solely for the lesser offence of the false registration of assets, with the charge of mafia association added after the state prosecutor’s office had appealed to the Supreme Court. As it happened, when officers went to his home to arrest Barbaro, he wasn’t there. Apparently he had managed to disappear – true to his nickname – just a few minutes before the Carabinieri arrived.

Homage to Sergeant Marino
This marked the beginning of a period of hiding in the mountains of Aspromonte, something of a family tradition. The carabinieri, led by Lieutenant Colonel Pasqualino Toscani, commander of the Locri force, arrived at Barbaro’s house at lunchtime.

The table was laid for the family, including his four children and six grandchildren, his mother and his wife, Carmine Maria Papalia, 46, who is the niece of Domenico, Antonio and Rocco Papalia, the boss of Buccinasco released on Friday from Secondigliano prison in Naples after serving a 26-year sentence. The “aristocratic” credentials of ‘u sparitu are further bolstered, as if they needed to be, by his alliance with the powerful Pelle family from San Luca through his sister, Marianna, 50, who is married to Giuseppe Pelle, the heir of boss ‘Ntoni Gambazza.

When the carabinieri entered the house, breaking down the door with a battering ram, Rocco Barbaro tried to escape by the stairs and then up to the roof, only to find officers waiting for him.

At that point, he gave himself up, congratulating the senior officer as tradition dictates, and told his mother Elisabetta to put on some coffee for the Carabinieri. “We managed to bypass the gang’s tight control of the territory,” explained Lieutenant Colonel Toscani, “and to do so by day, in the centre of the town, was an extremely complex operation.

Anyone who is familiar with the area knows how impenetrable it is”. He concluded with a dedication to Sergeant Antonino Marino, a carabiniere from Platì killed on 9 September 1990 in Bovalino. He was shot by Rocco’s father, Ciccio ‘u castanu, who was sentenced to life for the murder together with the Milan-based boss Antonio Papalia. “This success is for him, in memory of a fine carabiniere officer”.
Plati, Lombardy, and Australia.... 3 strongholds...
more widespread or more involved in drugs in doesnt mean more powerful, at least not always
i think de stefano-tegano and condello-imerti are more powerful, they litterally run reggio calabria politcs
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Strax
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Re: Ndrangheta

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scagghiuni wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 6:58 am i think de stefano-tegano and condello-imerti are more powerful, they litterally run reggio calabria politcs
'Ndrina La Maggiore is probably the most influential 'Ndrina of all time in my opinion. \

De stefano-Tegano have insane political and masonic connections , Giorgio "The Lawyer" De Stefano is even member of P3/P4 as i read somewhere.
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Re: Ndrangheta

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more widespread or more involved in drugs in doesnt mean more powerful, at least not always
i think de stefano-tegano and condello-imerti are more powerful, they litterally run reggio calabria politcs
True.... that's what made the whole Vibo Valentia thing interesting....

You had the Mancuso... one of the most powerful ndrine... with strong Masonic ties, very violent, ( even amongst family members..) very large, Cosa Nostra members, just like the DeStefano, part of the "massacre wing" of the Coleonesi/ State led brain trust... (I dont know what to call it....) and yet the Bellocco clan recognized an upstart group to destabilize them. They were primarily drug traffickers...it was actually pretty strange... I still dont quite get it....

You follow that one?
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Re: Ndrangheta

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Well its usually like that , big in drugs = a lot of money = power. But its not always like that,as we can see in some cases from Calabria.
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