A major police operation targeting the Calabrian mafia, the Drangetastarted this morning in European countries.

Drangetta is based in its southern Italian region Calabria and has undercut her Cosa Nostra to become the most powerful mafia organization in Italy and one of the most extensive crime networks in the world.

In January 2023, Matteo Messina Denaro, the infamous founder and leader of Cosa Nostra who had been on the run for 30 years, was arrested and since then the organization has been significantly weakened.

Police operations were carried out in Belgiumthe Francethe Italythe Portugal her Spain and Germany, where searches and arrests were made, the judicial authorities of the country announced.

Hundreds of German police intervened in six of its districts Germany. More than 100 investigations were carried out and around thirty arrest warrants were executed, of which four were European, according to the authorities of the states of Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.

The suspects are accused of money laundering, tax evasion, fraud and drug smuggling, according to the announcement by the German judicial authorities.

Bavarian police said the arrests were the result of investigations dubbed “Operation Eureka” that lasted more than three years.

According to the same source, Italian and Belgian investigators believe that the criminal organization smuggled almost 25 tons of cocaine from October 2019 to January 2022 and channeled more than €22 million from Calabria to Belgium, the Netherlands and South America.

Those arrested included four people in Bavaria, 15 in North Rhine-Westphalia and 10 in the southwestern German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, while police seized evidence from dozens of locations, including homes and offices.

Two suspects wanted in the western German state of Saarland have been arrested in Italy. The police did not release their names and only announced that one is aged 47 and the other is 25.

According to German media outlets MDR and FAZ, more than 100 arrest warrants are to be executed today in various countries.