Inside the operation to bring down Italy’s ’Ndrangheta mafia
The crime organisation is reeling from a string of raids, after revenge attacks blew their cover
Perched in the Calabrian hills, the small town of San Luca is a stronghold for Europe’s most powerful cocaine mafia, the ’Ndrangheta. So when an undercover police officer posing as a criminal got inside, colleagues were concerned he would never get out.
“On the day he was invited to San Luca by mafia members, officers were hidden in the hills around the town watching with binoculars and had a helicopter ready to extract him if things went wrong,” said Colonel Massimiliano D’Angelantonio, a top investigator with Italy’s paramilitary carabinieri police.
The agent, whose story is being told for the first time, made it out alive. Information he uncovered helped to set up Operation Eureka, a devastating strike last month against ’Ndrangheta clans from San
