U.S.-Italy Mafia Network Busted in 'Unprecedented' Sweep

By Claudio Lavanga and Alexander Smith

ROME - Police in Italy and the United States have broken up a major organized crime network made up of powerful mafia clans plotting to smuggle huge amounts of illegal drugs and weapons, officials said on Tuesday.

Officers on both sides of the Atlantic worked together in what they called an "unprecedented" two-year operation involving wiretaps and undercover officers penetrating deep into the heart of the alleged network, American and Italian officials said at a press conference in Rome.

Seventeen people in Italy and seven in New York were arrested in coordinated sweeps just after 7 p.m. ET on Monday. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars in cash were also recovered in the raids.

"We realized the 'Ndrangheta wanted to create a bridge with the U.S. to move narcotics across the ocean," U.S. magistrate Marshall Miller said, referring to the powerful criminal organization in Calabria, Italy.

"What the 'Ndrangheta did not know was that a much stronger bridge existed already between the U.S. and Italy, that of the cooperation between our forces," he added.

Law enforcement officials said the bust reveals an attempt by New York's Gambino Mafia family to establish a link with the 'Ndrangheta in Italy, and that the two clans were in the "advanced stages" of plans to smuggle drugs and weapons from South America to the port of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, in southern Italy.

The seven people arrested in New York were charged with money laundering. Officials said they were planning to ship cocaine from Guyana to Italy, bypassing the U.S. The profit from that would have been reinvested to move heroin from Italy to the U.S., Miller said.

Alessandra Tarantino / AP

U.S. and Italian authorities hold a joint press conference Tuesday after the anti-mafia operation.