Tegano, not a man of peace

Correction to this article

WITH a more easily pronounceable name, the 'Ndrangheta, the mafia of Calabria, Italy's toe, might have achieved greater notoriety. Police and prosecutors began warning as far back as the 1990s that it had become the country's richest, most dangerous organised-crime syndicate, ahead of Sicily's Cosa Nostra. Yet although a third group, the Camorra in and around Naples, has become infamous thanks to Roberto Saviano's best-selling book “Gomorrah”, the 'Ndrangheta remains almost unknown beyond Italy.

Investigators say that the 'Ndrangheta has prospered largely because its links to the Colombian cartels have given it a pre-eminent role in the transatlantic cocaine trade. The man credited with forging those links is Roberto Pannunzi. Last month, it emerged that the Italian authorities had let him slip away—for a second time. He was first arrested in Medellín, Colombia, in 1994, when his captors refused his offer of “a million dollars, right now”. Extradited to Italy, he was let go when his detention order expired. Mr Pannunzi was then rearrested in 2004 and later convicted. But last year, after a heart attack, he was sent from jail to a private clinic near Rome. In March he disappeared. The news was kept quiet for more than three weeks, ostensibly so as not to obstruct his recapture.

On April 26th the state was partly compensated by the arrest of Giovanni Tegano, reputedly the most senior gangster in the region's biggest city, Reggio Calabria. He was a key participant in Italy's bloodiest-ever mafia war, which claimed the lives of almost 600 people in the six years to 1991. The interior minister, Roberto Maroni, acclaimed “the heaviest blow that could have been inflicted on the 'Ndrangheta.”

But official rejoicing was tempered when a crowd of 500 formed outside the police station where Mr Tegano had been taken and burst into applause when he emerged. Some shouted that the police had arrested a “man of peace.” Many in the crowd were reportedly related to the 70-year-old mobster, but the incident still shows the grip that the 'Ndrangheta has on Calabria, which is one of Italy's poorest regions. Reggio's deputy chief prosecutor, Michele Prestipino, argues that it could yet be prised open. Bugged telephone calls showed mobsters lamenting a “certain intolerance” among those they extorted and terrorised, he said. But there has been nothing like the brave revolt by some Sicilian businessmen.

The day Mr Tegano was seized, police in Rosarno began an operation to dismantle a system of grossly exploitative agricultural work and the clan thought to be behind it. In January Rosarno saw a riot by African crop-pickers and violent reprisals by local people, some allegedly linked to the Pesce clan of the 'Ndrangheta. Of 40 suspected members and associates, seven were women. They have long played a prominent role in the 'Ndrangheta, partly because (unlike Cosa Nostra) the 'Ndrangheta's “families” are based on actual families. This makes them harder to infiltrate and so less susceptible to pentitismo (mobsters turning state's evidence), which has proved a crucially important weapon in the fight against Cosa Nostra.

The countervailing drawback has often been disunity. If Cosa Nostra was a pyramid, the 'Ndrangheta was more of an archipelago of similar but separate islands. That may be changing. The newspaper La Repubblica reports that police recently listened in on conversations in which 'Ndrangheta affiliates were heard for the first time speaking of it as a unified structure. One, echoing the language of its Sicilian counterpart, declared: “We are all one thing. We are the 'Ndrangheta.”





Correction: Reggio Calabria is not, as we originally wrote, the regional capital. But it is the region's biggest city. This was corrected on May 17th 2010.