This Wednesday a “large-scale” European police operation is taking place in several countries, including Portugal, focused on members of the Italian criminal organization Ndrangheta, according to judicial sources.
The police carried out this morning dozens of arrests and house searches throughout Germany, in an operation in which more than 1,000 agents participated who carried out searches in dozens of homes, offices and shops in the states of Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. prosecutors said in a joint statement.
More than 30 suspects with outstanding warrants were arrested.
“Among other offences, the defendants are accused of money laundering, tax evasion, commercial fraud and drug trafficking,” reads a statement from the North Rhine-Westphalia state criminal investigation office.
The raids are part of a broader joint investigation that involved Europol and also included simultaneous actions against the group in France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain, the same note added.
According to the German media MDR and FAZ, more than 100 arrest warrants will be executed in different countries today.
The Bavarian Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, described the operation as a “sensitive blow against the ‘Ndrangetha”, a criminal organization based in the Italian region of Calabria (south) and considered the richest and most powerful mafia in Italy, with an extension growing worldwide, covering more than 40 countries.
According to the Bavarian judicial police, the German authorities acted within the framework of “Operation Eureka”, coordinated by Europol and Eurojust.
The Eureka operation, launched at the European level more than three years ago, is “one of the most important and significant in recent years in the field of organized crime in Italy,” the Bavarian police stressed.
As part of these investigations, the Italian and Belgian authorities were able to attribute to ‘Ndrangetha the importation and trafficking of around 25 tons of cocaine, in the period from October 2019 to January 2022, the same source said.
Financial flows of more than 22 million euros from Calabria to Belgium, the Netherlands and South America were also identified.
Source: TSF
