The Carabinieri police's ROS unit on Tuesday arrested 27 people in dawn raids as part of a mayor operation targetting the Di Lauro clan of Campania's Camorra mafia.
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This morning the Carabinieri of the Special Operational Group and the Provincial Command of Naples carried out a precautionary custody order, issued by the GIP of Naples upon request by the local District Anti-Mafia Directorate against 27 under investigation as they are seriously suspected in various capacities of the crimes of mafia association, external complicity in a mafia association, aggravated extortion, aggravated private violence, criminal association aimed at rigging facilitated aggravated auctions, aggravated criminal association by having facilitated a mafia clan and by the character of transnationality aimed at the smuggling of foreign manufactured tobacco.
At the same time, a preventive seizure measure was carried out on movable and immovable assets for a total value of approximately 8 million euros.
The investigations, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples, aimed at reconstructing the operations of the Di Lauro clan in the period of time between 2017 and 2021, in continuity with the investigations for the capture of the fugitive Di Lauro Marco (arrested on 2 March 2019), documented the organizational restructuring of the coterie while respecting the traditional rules imposed by Di Lauro Paolo, including the assumption of command by his older brother of age not detained.
The investigations have made it possible to reconstruct, in addition to the traditional illicit activities such as drugs, extortion and more, including threats to the family members of a collaborator of justice, a real "entrepreneurial turning point" as the basic choice of the Di Lauro clan which, abandoning almost entirely the military option, which saw the clique succumb to the Splinterists in the bloody feuds for control of the territory and drug dealing centers.
Entrepreneurial and financial activities are placed in this strategic perspective, with huge investments in the sector of judicial real estate auctions, in which the affiliates carried out conduct of disturbed freedom of the auctions, through threats addressed to other participants to force them not to show up, allowing them to the emissaries of the association were asked to purchase the properties, the subsequent resale of which would finance the further illicit activities of the association.
In the context, a sort of joint venture was detected, i.e. a real organic alliance or partnership , as a form of close collaboration between various organizations operating in Secondigliano, such as LICCIARDI and VINELLA GRASSI, aimed at achieving common economic interests such as awarding of real estate auctions or intervention for the revocation of extortion requests addressed to entrepreneurs close to the Di Lauro clan by third criminal organizations.
Investments in less risky activities compared to the past also involved the establishment of some companies fictitiously registered in the name of third parties (now subjected to seizure), through which the organization managed a well-known gym, a betting shop and some supermarkets as well as the drug smuggling sector. foreign manufactured tobaccos.
In fact, in this last illicit activity the existence of a stable and transnational criminal association, directed by the Di Lauro clan, aimed at tobacco trafficking, with imports from Eastern European countries, such as Bulgaria and Ukraine, was crystallized. of approximately 1500 kg of cigarettes, characterized by a distribution system on the Campania market, through a network of wholesalers who supplied, on consignment, the retailers and from which, on a weekly basis, the sums of money relating to the payment of supplies were withdrawn.
The investigations also made it possible to clarify how the organisation, financed by the top of the Di Lauro clan, by a well-known neo-melodic singer and his wife, with a total sum of around 500,000 euros, had taken steps, after purchasing the materials and machinery necessary, to set up a cigarette factory, subsequently seized, where, by importing raw tobacco from abroad, they could directly package packets of cigarettes to resell in the national territory or export abroad.
The entrepreneurial aspiration of the Di Lauro clan also involved investments in clothing companies and, together with the aforementioned neo melodic singer, the creation of a clothing brand registered with the CORLEONE trademark, as well as in the creation of an energy drink called 9 mm, evocative and almost winking at the world of organized crime. ■