FRANKFURT. More than 132 suspected of involvement in the Drageta criminal organization, mafia Calabria in south of Italywere arrested by the police of several European countries as part of a major operation by the European services of Eurojust and Europol.

The operation, which involved 2,770 police officers, carried out 150 raids and searches in eight European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia), as well as in Brazil and Panama. The 132 arrested will face trial for trafficking cocaine from Latin America to Europe, Australia and Africa, as well as money laundering, arms smuggling, corruption and murder.

The port of Antwerp in Belgium has been at the center of an investigation as cocaine’s main gateway to the European continent. In 2018, the prosecutor’s office in the Belgian province of Limburg, on the border of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, launched an investigation into the activities of the Italian Dragetta families and their alliance with other European criminal organizations for the import and transportation of cocaine into the country. continent. These families, originally from the San Luca region of Calabria, also hosted fugitive Italian mafiosi in Belgium and Germany.

“Whatsapp of criminals”

In 2021, a joint team of Belgian and Italian police officers was formed to use information obtained from the interception of encrypted communications between drug dealers on the SkyECC network. In 2020, law enforcement infiltration of the EncroChat network, dubbed the “WhatsApp of criminals”, provided invaluable intelligence to police in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Thanks to these elements, the judicial cooperation service Eurojust and Europol coordinated the activities of the prosecutor’s office in order to create a wide and excellently organized network. Drageta’s members worked primarily with the leaders of the Mexican drug cartel Clan del Golfo, as well as with a network of Albanian-born thugs in Ecuador.

According to Eurojust, the organization also took over some of the arms smuggling to Brazil, making a deal with the powerful PCC gang and securing cocaine shipments in return. Dragetta used the funds to invest heavily in real estate, hotels, restaurants, and department stores in Latin America, as well as in Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Portugal.

Other judicial investigations, such as the one in the Netherlands against the Wet Mafia, whose leader Riduan Taghi is currently on trial in Amsterdam, have shown financial links between the Wet Mafia and Dragheta in the ports of Antwerp. and Rotterdam. The Belgian-Dutch wet mafia is also linked to the Neapolitan Camorra mafia, as well as other criminal organizations in Eastern Europe, Suriname, South America and Morocco, acting as go-betweens on Dragetta’s behalf.

The work of the prosecutor’s offices of Belgium and the Netherlands on the use of materials from intercepted encrypted messages is titanic. According to Belgian Minister of Justice Vincent van Kiekenborn, the country’s customs annually seizes from 220 to 250 tons of drugs in Antwerp.

Draghetta significantly consolidated her power in Italy in the 1970s, surpassing the Sicilian Cosa Nostra in influence. In the following decades, it spread to other countries, establishing a presence even in Canada and Australia.

In 2008, the Italian institute Eurispes estimated Dragetta’s annual turnover at €44 billion, 3% of Italy’s GDP. Although this estimate is considered exaggerated, no one disputes the wealth and influence of the organization and its role in the cocaine trade in Europe.