Italy targets gang that has overtaken mafia

Police in Calabria yesterday began a crackdown against a shadowy network thought to have outgrown even the Sicilian mafia.

Scores of suspects in Italy and across Europe were detained in raids that the authorities said had netted nine suspected gangsters, weapons, explosives and drugs.

Their target was the 'ndrangheta, the Calabrian answer to the Sicilian mafia which in the past decade has grown fat on the cocaine traffic from Colombia and is now said to be richer and more powerful than its legendary counterpart across the Strait of Messina.

It is composed of 75 individual gangs with some 7,000 members and an annual revenue of an estimated €35bn (£24bn).