Breaking news: Italy’s anti-Mafia police seize Malta companies used to launder money for the Ndrangheta’s cocaine trade

News broke today that Italy’s anti-organised-crime police have seized €2 billion in assets that belong to the ‘Ndrangheta, Reggio Calabria’s crime syndicate.

The ‘Ndrangheta, together with the Camorra – the crime syndicate which operates out of Naples – controls much of Europe’s cocaine trade.

(In transcripts of telephone conversations between members of two Camorra clans, recorded by order of an investigating magistrate and published by the Italian media last year, Bastjan Dalli is described as “the brother of the Maltese prime minister” and named as the Camorra contact for Malta. He is the one you should contact to set up a gaming company in Malta for money-laundering purposes, one of them tells the other – “Tell him you are my close friend.” Bastjan Dalli is illiterate.)

The ‘Ndrangheta assets now seized by the Italian police include 1,500 betting shops, 82 online gambling sites and 60 companies, besides real estate.

There are arrest warrants out on 28 people while another 23 have been placed under house arrest or police bail.

Eleven of the companies seized are in Malta, Spain, Austria and Romania.

A statement by the Italian police said that the ‘Ndrangheta “recycled an enormous amount of dirty money through the use of gaming accounts assigned to willing or unwitting people, in violation of the law, accumulating significant profits that were then reinvested by buying new companies and licences to further expand their activities”.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has described this as “a serious blow to the ‘Ndrangheta”. Two weeks ago earlier, the Italian police seized assets worth €1.6 billion from a Sicilian Mafia family, including 33 companies, hundreds of houses, villas and other real estate, 80 bank accounts, 40 insurance policies and more than 40 cars.