Crime family's wall of silence starts to crumble

The wall of silence that has shielded Europe's most powerful, but most shadowy, organised crime group is finally set to fall, with the assistance of a pair of "supergrasses" who have turned against their former allies.

Following 15 years in which Calabria's 'Ndrangheta Mafia appeared impenetrable, Italian investigators say the state now has not one but two informants.

Mobster Antonino Lo Giudice has begun talking to investigators in the past few days. His evidence comes a month after another 'Ndrangheta figure, Roberto Moio, began revealing the group's secrets.

The 'Ndrangheta, which has an estimated €46 billion ($85 billion) turnover thanks to its dominant role in Europe's cocaine trade, is tighter-knit than Sicily's Cosa Nostra. Its code of silence has proved its greatest strength.

In desperation, 'Ndrangheta leaders have launched what one leading Italian journalist, Attilio Bolzoni, has described as a "war on the state", with bombs targeting prosecutors and Reggio Calabria's main courthouse.

On October 6 an anonymous caller told police to look near the city's anti-Mafia HQ for "a surprise" for the regional prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone. They found a bazooka rocket launcher. Pignatone had previously received a letter containing three bullets. In late August, a bomb had damaged the entrance to the home of the Reggio Calabria region's prosecutor general.

Rome responded by sending troops into the southern Calabrian region earlier this month, at the request of local authorities.

At the weekend it emerged that Italy's Justice Minister, Angelino Alfano, has recently received death threats. "The clans of the 'Ndrangheta have to understand that the state is present and will win," he responded.

While welcoming the new willingness to tackle organised crime, critics have noted that the state's failure to intervene in recent decades has allowed the phenomenon to grow.

Bolzoni wrote in La Repubblica newspaper recently that the tide is turning, thanks to the new informants - and the new wave of magistrates and special police units sent into the region, which enabled those witnesses to be seized in the first place. Of the two mobsters-turned witnesses, Bolzoni said that Moio, a 'Ndrangheta colonel and a member of the feared Tegano clan, was in the position "to reveal nearly 20 years of secrets".

Prosecutors are deciding whether Lo Giudice can be admitted to Italy's witness protection programme; but on the basis of one of his tip-offs the police located a weapons cache.

Italian investigators received another boost in July this year when they captured Domenico Oppedisano, 80, who had recently been revealed as the organisation's "boss of bosses".

The existence of a supreme boss indicated that the Calabrian crime group has a pyramidal structure similar to that of the Sicilian Mafia. This would leave it more vulnerable to key arrests.

- INDEPENDENT