Rome police seize Café de Paris in Mafia sting

Police in Rome seized more than €200 million of property owned by the powerful 'Ndrangheta crime ring yesterday, including the historic Café de Paris featured in Federico Fellini's 1960 film La Dolce Vita.

Officers from the Carabinieri military police and the financial crime squad impounded cafes and restaurants, businesses and luxury cars from suspected members of the 'Ndrangheta, authorities said in a statement.

In recent years, the clan from the southern Italian region of Calabria has outgrown the Sicilian Mafia to become the most powerful organised crime group in Italy. It dominates the drug trade in Europe, including trafficking cocaine from South America. Café de Paris, in Rome's chic Via Veneto, was immortalised in Fellini's film in which heartthrob Marcello Mastroianni portrays a paparazzo scouring Rome for celebrities on a Vespa and falls for a glamorous movie star, played by Anita Ekberg.

The café was sold in 2005 for €250,000 ($354,800) to a hairdresser from Calabria who, police sources said, is a suspected member of the Alvaro-Palamara gang of the 'Ndrangheta.

In a separate operation, police arrested 17 people on drug trafficking charges in Calabria and around the northern city of Milan. Police are still searching for another three suspects.