They aren't the Mafia, that's another set of crooks.
But what do I know? Thanks to Big Bang Theory I can't see the word 'Mobster' without adding "sauce."
Anyhoo, you've probably seen news of the giant maxi-trial of the ’Ndrangheta gangsters going on in Italy, perhaps even know some of the 355 defendants and 900 witnesses, it's a pretty big deal. And here is where the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project juxtaposes the headline-making OpenLux report with the astounding reach of the ’Ndrangheta.
Luxembourg City is a long way from Calabria geographically but very close in their love of money and hatred of the tax man.
From The OCCRP, February 15:
By the time Santo Rumbo turned up in Luxembourg, he was already deeply enmeshed in the world of the Italian mafia.
At just 31 years old, he’d allegedly risen to one of the highest ranks of the ’Ndrangheta, the vicious Calabrian crime group that is responsible for a good chunk of Europe’s cocaine trade.
So Italian police were more than a little concerned to learn he had moved to the tiny northwestern European nation, where he got involved in a restaurant business along with a group of young migrants from an impoverished Italian village near his hometown of Siderno, in the ’Ndrangheta’s heartland.
The intensely hierarchical and clannish ’Ndrangheta have fanned out across the world from their home base in southern Italy, often using family-based chain migration to get footholds in new markets.
But the town of Siderno, on the sunny Ionian coast, is still the capital of their global narco-empire. There, the mighty Commisso clan rules over a number of ’Ndrangheta families that are so powerful that their decisions can affect global cocaine prices.
Santo Rumbo’s father, Riccardo, was one of these family leaders, heading the Rumbo-Figliomeni subgroup.
He had a reputation for power and ruthlessness, and taught Santo the ways of his trade. In 2009, the younger Rumbo set up a money-lending business in Siderno under his father’s guidance. When Riccardo was jailed in 2010, Santo allegedly took an important role in the Rumbo ’ndrina.
At some point after that — investigators don’t know when — Santo Rumbo made his way to Canada, where he spent time with mob bosses there and received one of the ’Ndrangheta’s highest rankings.
🔗Societies and Endowments
The upper echelons of the ’Ndrangheta are intensely secretive and almost impossible to penetrate. Even lower-ranking mafiosi might not know who holds what dote, or rank, much less police and investigators. But we do know that doti are incredibly important.
The highest possible dote is Padrino, followed by Quartino, Trequartino, Vangelo, and Santa. Only mafiosi holding one of these top rankings are allowed to interact with heads of other mafia groups, the state, business leaders, and members of the fraternal order of Freemasons. Mafiosi above a certain dote are also eligible to sit on the provincia, the institution that rules over the entire ’Ndrangheta.
Like any other organization, the ’Ndrangheta can suffer from title inflation. The Vangelo ranking was created relatively recently, after bosses felt the ranks of the Santa had become too crowded, according to notes seized during searches.
Prosecutors in Reggio Calabria only learned about Santo Rumbo’s high ranking by chance, when they overheard two ’Ndrangheta bosses in Canada talking about him on a wiretap. One mentioned that Rumbo was given a higher dote than his brother, who’d held the Vangelo until he died.
If Rumbo did hold a ranking of Trequartino before the age of 30, this would have been an extraordinarily rapid rise through the mafia ranks.
Unfortunately for him, around that time an Italian police operation was under way to root out branches of the ’Ndrangheta in Canada. Wiretapped conversations from Operation Canadian Connection 2 tipped police off that Santo Rumbo’s next stop was Luxembourg.
The tiny country in the heart of Europe is one of the continent’s most notorious tax havens and has a poor record on corporate transparency. Until recently there was no public information available about who owned companies registered in Luxembourg....
....MUCH MORE
