LITTLE-KNOWN MAFIA IS COCAINE 'KING'

The 'Ndrangheta of Italy's Southern Calabria Region Rules the
Expanding European Drug Trade.

GIOIA TAURO, ITALY -- Europe is fast overtaking the U.S. as the
leading destination for the world's cocaine, and a single Italian
mafia is largely responsible.

The 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate, a ruthless and mysterious network of
155 families born in the rough hills here in southern Italy's
Calabria region, now dominates the European drug trade. By
establishing direct ties with Colombian producers and building a
multibillion-dollar empire that spans five continents, the syndicate
has metamorphosed into one of the craftiest criminal gangs in the
world, authorities say.

"'Ndrangheta is king," said Sabas Pretelt de la Vega, a former
Colombian interior minister who is his country's ambassador to Rome.

The 'Ndrangheta (pronounced en-DRAHN-geh-tah) peculiarly combines the
modern skills of multinational-corporation high finance with a
stubborn grip on archaic rural traditions. Some members live in
garishly opulent villas outside Madrid and invest in bustling
restaurants and hotels in Germany, whereas others, including key
bosses, remain in the dreary, closed Calabrian mountain villages of
their birth. It is a mafia of businessmen in Dolce & Gabbana, of
sheepherders in scruffy woolens.

Its success stems from moving early and unwaveringly into cocaine
trafficking while avoiding the kind of public limelight (and police
crackdown) focused on its better-known Sicilian counterpart, the
Mafia, or "Cosa Nostra."

Working from "the toe of Italy's boot," a region historically
neglected and ignored, the 'Ndrangheta maintains a hard-as-stone code
of silence that repels most penetration efforts by police and other
authorities. And because each family is a cell cooperating only
loosely with other families and without a central hierarchy, the
capture of a leader here or there does not even dent the organization.

Over the last two decades, the syndicate has deployed its members to
strategic locations along trafficking and distribution routes, in
Colombia and Venezuela, Canada, Africa, Spain and as far as
Australia. It takes orders from buyers in Europe (including other
mafiosi) and brokers deals with the suppliers in Colombia.

The 'Ndrangheta gained the confidence of the Colombians, eliminated
the middlemen and dealt as readily with the leftist guerrillas of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as with the
right-wing paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia, or AUC, two groups that exercise major control over cocaine
production in Colombia.

The personal contact, the guarantee of secrecy and the reliability of
the business transactions all have made the 'Ndrangheta mobster an
appealing partner for the Colombians.

"He is seen as a man of his word. He pays in cash. He pays
immediately," said Renato Cortese, a regional commander of the state
anti-mafia police. "And he never talks."

Expanding Market

For income, the 'Ndrangheta has chosen a lucrative and expanding market.

By some estimates, including that of Pretelt de la Vega, the
Colombian diplomat, the amount of cocaine being shipped to Europe
exceeds that going to the United States, a reversal of the historical
pattern. Italian authorities give lower figures, saying cocaine
shipments are divided half-and-half between Europe and the United
States, and U.S. officials cite older statistics that show more
cocaine flowing to American shores.

Whatever the amounts, no one disputes that the cocaine market in the
United States has stabilized, whereas that of Europe is growing.
Seizures of cocaine in Europe have doubled in the last five years,
although they remain a small portion of global interceptions,
according to the latest report from the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime.

Usage of cocaine in Europe, meanwhile, has skyrocketed, up by a
million users last year, to 4.5 million continent-wide, according to
the European Union's drug-monitoring center in Lisbon. Leading the
pack are Britain, Spain, Denmark and Italy.

"The decline in the United States is offset by alarming increases in
some European countries," the U.N. said.

Although Cosa Nostra has dominated international headlines and
popular culture for a generation, it has been eclipsed by its
Calabrian counterpart in terms of power and wealth, said Nicola
Gratteri, the region's top anti-mafia prosecutor.

The 'Ndrangheta, which is thought to have business assets worth at
least $50 billion, grew as a protection racket in impoverished
southern Italy after World War II and then began to make big money
with kidnappings (including the abduction and grisly mutilation of
the grandson of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty in 1973). The name
comes from a Greek word meaning "virtue" or "heroism."

Eventually the group shifted to drugs and weapons trafficking, and by
the '90s was awash in cash, which it began laundering through real
estate and other businesses.

A Turning Point

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a turning point, recalled Piero
Grasso, Italy's senior anti-mafia prosecutor. In conversations
recorded by police, members of the Calabrian mob plotted a mad buying
spree in the newly available former Soviet bloc. "Buy everything!"
was the watchword.

"And today they know no borders," Grasso said.

Here in Calabria, they also enjoy access to the Gioia Tauro port, one
of the largest and busiest of the Mediterranean. Authorities say it
is a transshipment point for unmeasured pounds of cocaine. Of the
estimated 3,500 40-foot cargo containers that arrive daily, only
about 25 are opened for inspection, so finding drugs is as much luck
as skill, police say.

Suspicions were raised recently about a Uruguayan shipment to Greece
marked "lemons." Why would a Mediterranean country like Greece need
to import lemons from Uruguay? Inside a batch of rotting lemons,
inspectors found 220 pounds of cocaine.

"Drugs are burying us," said Col. Francesco Gazzani, regional head of
the Italian finance police.

In their investigations, Italian police and prosecutors working with
Colombian, Spanish and U.S. authorities have recorded thousands of
telephone calls and documented meetings and other communication
between the 'Ndrangheta and Colombian traffickers.

In one photographed surveillance stakeout, four people from Latin
America and Calabria can be seen sitting in broad daylight at one of
Milan's most fashionable outdoor cafes, against a backdrop of
rose-colored marble columns and the Duomo cathedral. They discuss a
cocaine deal, then one of them casually walks to a nearby pay phone
and places the order.

In another surveillance, a suspected 'Ndrangheta gangster telephones
a number in Colombia, a person with a Calabrian accent answers and
then simply whistles, and the caller says, "I understand."
Authorities say it was a signal that a shipment had departed.

One of the strongest links between the 'Ndrangheta and the
Colombians, investigators say, was Roberto Pannunzi, an alleged mafia
chieftain who was one of the top cocaine brokers in the syndicate
when he was arrested in 2004 as part of Operation Zappa, a five-year
investigation named after a gangster code word for "gun."

"Every important criminal figure went to him," said Diego Trotta, a
member of an elite police squad that captured Pannunzi.

Pannunzi, 59, married his son Alessandro into a notorious family from
Colombia's Medellin cartel as a way to cement the bonds. At the
height of his activities, authorities say, he was buying 3,300 to
4,400 pounds of cocaine a month. He boasted of the ease and
confidence with which he handled his Colombian suppliers.

"The fact is, Barba [a Colombian trafficker] will give us everything
without even a lira," Pannunzi told alleged 'Ndrangheta operative
Paolo Sergi, the target of another long-running probe, according to a
confidential wiretap made available to The Times.

"What do you think -- is the same amount available like the last
time, or maybe less?" Pannunzi's interlocutor wonders.

"Barba, at least, told me that he has 3 million [3,000 kilograms, or
6,600 pounds, of cocaine] and I'm thinking 500 or 700," Pannunzi
responds, using a numeric code for the price.

A beefy man with dark wavy hair, Pannunzi amassed such an enormous
fortune, investigators say, that he at one point simply threw away
millions of dollars worth of liras because the bills had been stacked
so high and for so long that they became moldy.

Back to Ancestral Home

Perhaps one of the most surprising features of the 'Ndrangheta is
that despite its fortunes, its members always come back to their
ancestral home in Calabria, almost as a spiritual touchstone. Though
they form clones of their home villages the world over, an internal
code obliges them to report back to the mother ship, said Gratteri,
the top regional ant-mafia prosecutor.

"You have to look at what this place gives them. Each top
'Ndranghista is an emperor," said Gratteri, whose work has earned him
round-the-clock bodyguards and transport in an armored car.

"He has the perverse pleasure to be able to decide the life or death
of 3,000, 5,000, maybe 10,000 people. He decides who lives. He
decides who is going to be mayor. He decides who is going to win the
state contracts. For the perverse mind, this is very gratifying."

Each family assigns a member to a certain criminal enterprise; if a
son is good in math, he might get the loan-shark business, whereas an
engineer would handle the acquisition of lucrative state building
contracts, a major area of corruption.

The tightness of the family network also has thwarted efforts by
authorities to infiltrate the crime gang. Several years ago, when the
government offered reduced jail time to mafiosi who would inform on
their cohorts, hundreds of Cosa Nostra operatives 'fessed up. But
only a few people associated with the 'Ndrangheta agreed to become
turncoats, and most of these were such minor figures that they had
little to offer.

"Every clan is a little Sparta," militarized and willing to fight to
the end, often egged on by the women of the family, said anti-mafia
prosecutor Alberto Cisterna.

Through the years, most killings by the 'Ndrangheta have been the
result of internal feuds or have targeted relatively low-level
officials, inspiring little public outrage. That changed last summer
with a bloody ambush outside a pizzeria in Duisburg, Germany. At
least two gunmen from one 'Ndrangheta family killed six members of a
rival clan, shocking Italians and Germans because of the brutality of
the attack and the extent to which the mafia had settled in Germany.

The slayings were the latest explosion of a long-running internal
feud that had at its root a power struggle over territory and
business, investigators say.

In the more than four months since the Duisburg massacre, Italian and
German police have arrested about 40 suspected mobsters, men and
women. But no one has any illusions that this represents a setback
for the Calabrian mafia.

"'Ndrangheta are the leader in Europe when it comes to trafficking
cocaine," Gratteri said, "and their trafficking is getting stronger
all the time."