Illegal drug trade from Colombia financed by ‘Ndrangheta criminal organization dismantled

 The umpteenth international illegal drug trade through Malpensa airport, was defeated by the Malpensa unit of finance police, with the arrest of 8 people, all Italians, and all believed to be part of a conspiracy, that traded cocaine from Peru to Italy. Among these, there is also an component of a ‘ndrangheta clan, who is considered the financier of the organization and who is described as “a very important criminal personality, which is already known to the press” by Gianluigi Fontana, the chief prosecutor of Busto Arsizio, who didn’t want to reveal his name or the identities of the other people involved. The investigation started June 2013 and finished 17 March, with the execution of the arrest orders produced by Maria Cristina Ria, the substitute prosecutor of Busto Arsizio.

Everything started with the arrest of a man from Brescia, who was transporting approximately 12kg of cocaine. He literally had them on, because the technique to transport the psychotropic drug was to impregnate his clothes with liquid cocaine . The smuggler came from the capital of Peru, via Madrid and this is a strange route for the big cocaine trades from South America, and maybe it is considered safer by the drug traffickers. It was clear from the beginning that he was a mule, a man recruited by an organization exclusively for cocaine transportation. The public prosecutor Ria immediately started a series of technical investigations, through telephone tapping and location data that progressively revealed the profile of the organization, based in Parabiago, with offshoots in Milan and its hinterland.

The investigations on the smuggler made possible profiling a group of around ten people, some of them were relatives, all involved in the trade. Telephone tapping also made it possible to understand who was the contact in South America, a citizen imprisoned in Bolivia, from where he could easily communicate with other people outside. Over the investigation also other four attempts of importation were ascertained: two of them were blocked by Peruvian authorities, one aborted for bureaucratic problems and the last one failed when the smuggler gave up. Finally, there was the blitz that closed, in Italy, the cocaine trade. During the operation, conducted by the squad of the lieutenant colonel Giuseppe Bua, two pistols, hidden in a bathroom wall, some high-precision scales and cocaine packaging material were found. Furthermore, some false banknotes were found: 98 500 Euro note and 345 1000 Franc notes.

Also this investigation confirms how entrenched the ‘ndrangheta are in Lombardy, especially in Milan’s hinterland, with numbers always more striking. These criminal groups enjoy contacts and branches that confirm the power of this organization that became, at least in Italy, the most active and powerful.