Raids in Brazil: Italian police launch massive strike against Cosa Nostra

Raids in Brazil
Italian police succeed in carrying out a large-scale strike against Cosa Nostra

August 14, 2024, 2:45 AM

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Italy's financial police have been investigating the Cosa Nostra milieu for years, then hit it in Brazil. Investigators seize €50 million in assets and arrest a suspect who is said to have laundered mafia money as a front for decades.

Italy's financial police say they have struck a major blow against the mafia in Brazil. Officers from the Sicilian regional command, working with their Brazilian colleagues, seized assets worth €50 million during a large-scale operation in the northeastern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte, the financial police said. Several properties in Italy and Switzerland were also searched.

A local Sicilian businessman has been arrested in the Brazilian city of Natal. He is said to have helped the Cosa Nostra mafia branch launder money through investments in Brazilian companies since 2000, Italian news agency Agenzia Nuova reported. The man, who police have not identified, is said to have been in contact with one of Palermo’s “most influential men of honor” since 2000, the agency said, using a term for top mafia figures. According to local Sicilian media, he is said to be mafia boss Giuseppe Calvaruso, who was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to a lengthy prison term in 2022.

According to the financial police, police in Brazil seized assets from 17 people. They are accused of aiding and abetting the formation of a mafia-like organization, extortion and money laundering. The attack was preceded by years of investigation. More than 100 Italian financial police officers took part in the raids, some of whom traveled to Brazil in recent days to support their colleagues there.

During the raids against the mafia, properties were also searched in several Italian regions and Switzerland, police said. According to the European judicial authority Eurojust, Swiss authorities were cooperating in the cross-border operation.