A “large-scale” European police operation is now taking place in several countries, including Portugal, focused on members of the Italian criminal organization ‘Ndrangheta, according to judicial sources.
Police carried out dozens of arrests and house searches this morning across Germany, in an operation involving more than 1,000 officers who carried out searches of dozens of homes, offices and shops in the states of Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. , the prosecutors said in a joint statement.
More than 30 suspects who had outstanding arrest warrants were arrested.
“Among other crimes, the defendants are accused of money laundering, tax evasion, commercial fraud and drug smuggling,” says a statement from the state criminal investigation office of North Rhine-Westphalia.
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, adds the same note.
According to the German media MDR and FAZ, more than 100 arrest warrants will be executed today in different countries.
The Bavarian Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, classified 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 a growing extension global, 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.
Operation Eureka, launched at 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”, underlined the Bavarian police.
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, said the same source.
Financial flows of more than 22 million euros from Calabria to Belgium, the Netherlands and South America were also identified.
