The World's Most Evil Gangs (27 page)

By such means, and with the probability of corrupt political protection, the ’Ndrangheta is now so invisible that it has spread around the world unnoticed. ’Ndrina are operating in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Eastern Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States. An exasperated Florida district attorney complained that, of all organised criminal groups, the ’Ndrangheta has proved the most difficult to understand, let alone penetrate. It is, he said, ‘invisible, like the dark side of the moon.’

In June 2012 an Italian prosecutor felt it necessary to warn Australia about the standing of ’Ndrangheta in that country due to the murder of an Australian detective by saying: ‘The
’Ndrangheta is the organisation that runs the international cocaine market. It doesn’t do its business in Calabria but around the world. It has infiltrated all economic sectors and it controls voting and political candidates at a national and international level. I urge the Australians not to underestimate this organisation. Otherwise it will be too late.’

It was certainly too late for Detective-Sergeant Geoffrey Bowen. On 22 March 1994, the day before the start of a court case against a ’Ndrangheta leader named Dominic Perre, Bowen was brutally murdered by a parcel bomb that had reached his Adelaide National Crime Authority (NCA) office without being detected.

Bowen was a senior detective with the NCA who was exclusively involved with Operation Cerberus; the investigation into Italian organised crime in Australia instituted to answer the question: ‘Does the Mafia exist in Australia, and if so, indicate to what extent?’ Bowen himself was quite certain of ’Ndrangheta’s existence, having established that some Italian immigrants showed extraordinary allegiance to two seemingly insignificant Calabrian villages – Plati, which is often described as the ‘heart of ’Ndrangheta’ and San Luca, the ‘soul’ or the ‘cradle of ’Ndrangheta’. These villages had come to international notice decades earlier when the area had earned the title of ‘Kidnap Capital’ due to local criminals who specialised in kidnapping members of wealthy, northern Italian families and holding them in caves in the surrounding mountains. Some of the proceeds of the ransoms, it was discovered, had been sent to Australia and ‘invested’ in the lucrative business of cultivating marijuana.

Detective-Sergeant Bowen took control of the investigation in August 1993 after the discovery of a huge marijuana crop in
the Northern Territory. Police described the extent of criminality involved as probably Australia’s ‘most complex’. Eleven men, all of Calabrian descent, were subsequently charged, with Bowen concluding that Domenic Perre was the financier and organiser of the crop of 15,000 plants and associated drug workshops. His home was raided and subsequently a charge laid by Bowen against Perre for possession of an illegal listening advice. The court date for the charge was set for 3 March 1994.

The bomb went off the day before the hearing. Domenic Perre was arrested for the murder of Bowen and the attempted murder of Peter Wallis, an NCA lawyer who was seriously hurt in the blast. But the evidence was deemed insufficient and later that year, charges were dropped. Despite numerous police reviews of the case – and a 1999 coroner’s inquest that found Perre had planted the bomb – the murder still remained officially ‘unsolved’.

So what makes a ’Ndrina member? Who are these ‘untouchables’ who have grown from groupings of dispossessed, semi-literate village thugs into members of an international conglomerate that is estimated to have an annual income in Europe alone of €44 billion?

This brings us back to the gangster mentioned earlier in the infamous Getty kidnapping case. Saverio ‘Saro’ Mammoliti was a member of a ’Ndrina family from the Calabrian town of Castellace. When his father was killed in a feud with a rival clan, Saro and his three brothers took over the role of gang leaders. They expanded their territory and wealth by forcing neighbours to sell them their land at miniscule prices – or sometimes simply stealing it by fencing it off.

While his siblings remained in their rural fiefdom, Saro
became known as the ‘Playboy of Castellace’, dressing smartly and enjoying La Dolce Vita in Reggio Calabria and then Rome, driving around in his Jaguar sports car in the company of beautiful women. In 1972 he escaped from jail, where he had been sent because of his long-running feud with the rivals who killed his father, and lived openly without fear of recapture for the next 20 years. While officially on the ‘most wanted’ list, he wed a 15-year-old local girl at Castellace’s parish church next to the local police station. Mammoliti was a fugitive when charged with kidnapping John Paul Getty III in 1973. He and fellow accused Girolamo Piromalli, an even more senior ’Ndrina member, were acquitted for lack of evidence, although Mammoliti picked up a secondary conviction for drug dealing.

The gangster, a long-time trafficker, had been caught in a sting operation by the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics whose agents approached him to supply heroin and cocaine. Mammoliti told them that, although he had supplies available in Tangiers and Amsterdam, he could only enter the American market with the permission of fellow ’Ndrine, including his accomplice Piromalli and others as far afield as Holland and Canada.

However, Mammoliti had enough influence to get away with soft sentences – or none at all. In one raid, telephone numbers for the Prime Minister’s office and various Rome ministries were found in his possession. In a 1982 ‘maxi trial’ against the ’Ndrangheta he was sentenced to 33 years but had it quashed by the Italian Supreme Court. In 1984, when charged with murder, he had his property seized and then handed back. He and his wife were arrested for corruption in 1992 but freed due to lack of proof. Within months he was back in court charged with a litany of crimes – the murder of a
local landowner, six bomb attacks, 19 arson attacks, six major larcenies and the destruction of rival farmers’ property.

At last, the charges began to stick. Mamolitti was jailed for 22 years for extortion and other Mob-related offences. In 1995 he received a life sentence for similar charges, with another 20 years subsequently added on as anti-corruption prosecutors assembled fresh evidence. In 2003, Saro Mammoliti finally decided to collaborate with the Antimafia Commision and became a pentito. It was only then that the former playboy revealed the full extent of corruption in his Calabrian homeland and told investigators how money was syphoned off from criminal enterprises into an array of business ventures. He also finally confessed that he had been one of the kidnappers of John Paul Getty Jr way back in 1972 – and would indeed have cut off a great deal more than the boy’s ear had a ransom not been paid.