ROME, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Anti-mafia operations in Italy on Monday led to the arrests of 41 people and the seizure of some 120 million euros (148.9 million U.S. dollars) assets.
Alleged members of major clans belonging to the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate were hit in two separate probes coordinated by prosecutors in the southern Reggio Calabria region and in Florence in central Tuscany.
The targeted clans included notorious mafia families, such as Nirta-Scalzone, Araniti, and Piromalli, according to prosecutors.
Twenty-seven people were arrested in Calabria, and fourteen others in Florence, authorities said in a press conference.
All of them were variously charged with mafia association, usury, money laundering, and illegal ownership of assets, among other crimes.
Assets worth about 120 million euros (148.9 million U.S. dollars) were overall seized in the operations, including at least 51 companies.
"Most companies were aimed at issuing false invoicing in order to cover up the real financial flows of the clans," national anti-mafia prosecutor Federico Cafiero de Raho told the press conference. "After some two years, such firms were relocated in the UK to be dissolved, so that it would become almost impossible to retrace their businesses," the magistrate added.
The 14 suspects arrested in Florence were further charged with extortion, abduction, money laundering, and illegal transfer of financial assets, all aggravated by mafia methods, police said.
In fact, the economic assets seized in the central Tuscany region -- overall worth some 20 million euros (24.8 million U.S. dollars) -- would have played a crucial role in the money laundering, investigators explained.
The illegal activity would have involved both "collusive entrepreneurs, and businessmen who had accepted to cooperate with the clans because in financial troubles," prosecutor de Raho told state-run RAI Radio 1 channel.
Among Italy's three traditional mafia organizations -- Sicilian mob, Naples-based Camorra, and Calabrian 'Ndrangheta -- the latter is now seen as the richest and most powerful.
'Ndrangheta is believed to lead the drug traffic in Europe, and especially cocaine from South America, and to reinvest much of its revenues in several sectors of the legal economy worldwide.
The business volume of the organization was estimated in almost 44 billion euros (54.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 2007, according to the latest available estimate by Italy's Eurispes Research Institute.
At least 62 percent of these illegal profits would be generated by drug trafficking, followed by extortion and usury, weapon trafficking, and prostitution, Eurispes stated in the report at the time.
