the two Italians arrested in France remanded in custody

The two men arrested on Wednesday in France as part of the European dragnet against the Calabrian mafia were placed in pre-trial detention this Thursday evening in Nice, reveals France Inter. Aged 58 and 68, they are suspected of belonging to the ‘Ndrangheta mafia.

These two Italians will appear next Wednesday before the investigating chamber in Aix-en-Provence for the execution of a European arrest warrant issued by Italy. One of them is a restaurant owner based in Menton. The searches carried out on Wednesday enabled the authorities to seize 70,000 euros, as well as computer equipment and telephones.

The home of a third suspect – wanted by the Italian police – was also searched in Antibes. According to information from France Inter, the man was finally arrested in Italy.

On Wednesday, a large-scale police operation carried out simultaneously in several European countries targeted the Calabrian mafia, the powerful ‘Ndrangheta, preeminent in drug trafficking, resulting in 132 arrests in different countries. A dozen people were arrested in Belgium, twenty in Germany, and a hundred others in the peninsula for mafia association, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, tax evasion and money laundering. The operation, called “Eureka”is the “the hardest blow inflicted to date on the Italian criminal organization”underlines Europol, the agency of the European Union for police cooperation.