Tag Archives: italian mafia news

Rocco Morabito: Italian mafia boss held in Uruguay

One of Italy’s most wanted fugitives has been arrested in Uruguay after 23 years on the run from convictions for mafia association and drug trafficking.

Rocco Morabito of the ‘Ndrangheta organised crime gang was detained in the resort of Punta del Este.

Uruguayan police said he had been living there for more than 10 years under a false identity.

He was nicknamed “cocaine king of Milan” for his involvement in shipping the drug from South America to Italy.

The ‘Ndrangheta controls much of the world’s cocaine trade and police say Morabito was behind the smuggling of hundreds of kilos of cocaine from Brazil to Italy.

South American hideaway

Morabito is believed to have arrived in Uruguay in 2002.

Police arrested Morabito in a hotel in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo. But officials said he had settled in the resort of Punta del Este with false Brazilian identity papers in the name of Francisco Capeletto.

Read Full – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41146886

THE MAFIA IS TEAMING UP WITH NIGERIA’S ‘VIKING’ GANGSTERS TO RUN SEX RINGS IN SICILY

Mafia members in Sicily are teaming up with a Nigerian gang that uses machetes on its enemies and only accepts degree-qualified members, to run sex rings on the Italian island.

Police sources told The Times that members of the Vikings—a gang that sprung out of Nigerian universities in the 1980s and demands that members have no criminal record—have collaborated with the local Cosa Nostra, or the Sicilian Mafia in Ballaro, a town in Sicily, and were threatening to expand into the capital Palermo.

The groups have worked together on vice rings involving Nigerian women who have been trafficked to Italy as sex workers. Nigerian women began traveling to Italy in the 1980s to work as fruit pickers but soon turned to sex work, and an estimated 30,000 have since been trafficked from the West African country to work as prostitutes in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, The Guardian reported.

Read Full – http://www.newsweek.com/mafia-nigeria-migration-sex-work-trafficking-629627

No Italy ‘baby bonus’ for Mafia boss’s daughter Lucia Riina

Sicilian authorities have refused to pay Italy’s “baby bonus” to the youngest daughter of jailed Mafia boss Toto Riina, 36-year-old Lucia.

A painter, Lucia lives in Corleone and gave birth earlier this month.

Salvatore “Toto” Riina, former boss of the notorious Cosa Nostra, was jailed in 1993 and now has terminal cancer.

Italy’s top court ruled this month that he had a right to “die with dignity” under house arrest but there were protests and he may not be let out.

A parole board will have to decide in the northern city of Bologna, where 86-year-old Riina is in jail for his role in dozens of Cosa Nostra murders.

Two anti-Mafia judges – Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – were killed in 1992, in Riina’s “war against the state”.

Read Full – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40326094

Italian police busted a mafia group trying to smuggle over a billion dollars’ worth of cocaine into Europe

Italian anti-mafia police said they busted an international drug ring and arrested 54 people with ties to notorious mafia group ‘Ndrangheta attempting to smuggle cocaine with a street value of $1.7 billion into Europe.

While the ‘Ndrangheta is based in the southern Calabria region, the 54 people arrested were detained in different parts of Italy, the country’s authorities said, according to Reuters.

The group was allegedly conspiring to import about 8 metric tons, or 17,637 pounds, of cocaine from Colombia into Europe via seaports and airports in Calabria, which is at the southern tip of the Italian mainland.

Read Full Article – http://www.businessinsider.com/italy-cocaine-bust-drug-trafficking-ndrangheta-mafia-2017-1

Priest who was banned from giving mafia boss mass seeks meeting with Pope Francis

The mass was supposed to remember Rocco Sollecito, a mobster killed in Canada in May.

By


A priest wants to meet Pope Francis after he was banned from celebrating mass in memory of a mafia boss in the town of Grumo Appula, in the southern Italian region of Apulia.

Father Michele delle Foglie had invited the local congregation to church on Tuesday 27 December, to a service remembering mafia boss Rocco Sollecito, who was killed in Canada in May. Sollecito’s family had approached the local parish priest with the request for a memorial mass service, as is the religious custom in Italy.

Firstly, the police ordered the service to be moved to the evening and be treated as a private function, to prevent a breach of public order. The local archbishop subsequently ordered the service to be cancelled altogether, calling it a “serious scandal”.

The priest was reportedly frustrated with the intervention in what he deemed an interference with his authority as spiritual leader of the community. “I am thinking of appealing to Pope Francis so that he can receive me as a father welcomes a grieving son,” delle Foglie told local media, “The holy mass is not celebrated to honour the dead, is to remember the dead, and the more one has sinned, the more one asks for

Read Full Article – http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/priest-who-was-banned-giving-mafia-boss-mass-seeks-meeting-pope-francis-1598593