Italy has taken Mafia boss Rocco Morabito, one of Italy’s most wanted criminals and one of the world’s most powerful drug traffickers, from Brazil after 28 years of running.
Rocco Morabito ranks second on the list of Italy’s most wanted and dangerous mafia.
Twenty years ago, he was convicted in absentia for drug trafficking as part of the ‘Ndrangheta’, an organized crime gang whose profits from the cocaine trade reached billions of euros.
Italian police have described Morabito as one of the biggest drug traffickers in the world.
Morabito, 55, will be sentenced to 30 years in prison after being sentenced in absentia by a court in Milan in 2001.
While Brazilian police arrested this mob boss in a joint operation with Italian and American investigators in May 2021, Morabito was previously arrested in Uruguay in 2017 but escaped prison two years later.
A leaflet distributed by the Uruguayan Ministry of Interior on June 24, 2019 shows the arrest of Italian Rocco Morabito, wanted for more than two decades for crimes related to drug trafficking and mafia activities, in this country.
It was announced at the time that Italian mob boss Rocco Morabito had escaped from prison in Montevideo, Uruguay, awaiting his extradition to Italy, and that Morabito and three other prisoners had “escaped into a gap in the roof of the building. ”In the latter part of the day. at night and they robbed the inhabitants of the nearby farm.
This time, however, the mafia boss did not escape long after he was arrested in the city of Joao Pessoa in northeastern Brazil in May 2021.
According to the Italian anti-mafia prosecutor’s office in Calabria, Morabito played a key role in the cocaine trade between South America and Milan; it is a very important distribution area where the drug is sold in other parts of Italy and throughout Europe.
At the time of his arrest in Uruguay in 2017, Morabito was living in a luxurious villa at a beach resort under a pseudonym and a fake Brazilian passport, authorities said.
Police also confiscated a 9mm pistol, 13 cell phones, a cache coin and a luxury car upon his arrest at the Montevideo Hotel.
However, he remains the most wanted free man on the list of Italian mob bosses, believed to still hold the highest power in Sicily’s Cosa Nostra despite his escape since 1993.
In recent years, the ‘Ndrangheta has surpassed the Sicilian mafia in strength and scope, and its branches have spread almost throughout Europe, as investigations have revealed that they launder proceeds from cocaine sales. by infiltrating or buying into legitimate businesses such as restaurants. and hotels.
While a small group of dissident Italian prosecutors helped put some Cosa Nostra leaders behind bars for life, ‘Ndrangheta suffered less because of the family’s strong ties.
Source: The Guardian
Source: Arabic RT
