One of Italy's most wanted mob bosses was arrested in Uruguay on Monday after 23 years on the run from convictions for mafia association, drug trafficking and other serious crimes.

Rocco Morabito was considered the most wanted fugitive member of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, Italy's most powerful organised crime group and one of Europe's biggest importers of South American cocaine.

The 50-year-old was arrested on Monday at a hotel in Montevideo after Uruguayan police and Italian authorities worked together to determine his real identity, the Italian ministry said in a statement.

Italian media said he had been living in a luxury villa in Punta del Este, a resort town, with his Uruguayan wife.

Longtime Italian fugitive Rocco Morabito seen before going on the run in 1994 (left) and after he was caught in Uruguay (right) on Monday where he had been living under a false name and with a forged Brazilian passport

They reported that until a few months ago, investigators had concentrated their manhunt in Brazil.

But one of his children was recently registered for school in Uruguay with Morabito's real name instead of an alias, shifting the focus of the hunt for him to that country.

Dubbed the 'cocaine king of Milan,' Morabito had been wanted since 1994 after he was caught paying 13 billion lire ($8 million) to import almost a tonne of the drug, Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.

Morabito entered Uruguay in 2001, and took up residence with his wife in Punta del Este, the Uruguayan interior ministry said in a statement.

He was living there under the false identity of Francisco Antonio Capeletto Souza, of Rio de Janeiro, it added.

A luxury Mercedes coupe is parked in the villa where Italian mafia fugitive Rocco Morabito lived in the resort town of Punta del Este, Uruguay

A swimming pool in the backyard of the villa where Morabito lived in the luxury resort town of Punta del Este

'Ndrangheta boss Rocco Morabito pictured after his capture in Montevideo on Monday

Four different pictures of 'Ndrangheta boss Rocco Morabito before and after his capture in Montevideo

Morabito was jailed in Uruguay for using false documents while Italy's request for extradition is processed, the statement said, adding that $50,000 in cash was found at his home along with 13 cell phones.

An international arrest warrant was issued in 1995 with the aim of tracking down Morabito and extraditing him to Italy, where he has been sentenced to 30 years in jail.

The arrest ticks one member off the Italian interior ministry's five-strong list of the country's most-wanted organised criminals, on which Morabito had rubbed shoulders with feared Sicilian boss Matteo Messina Denaro.