Police smash Mafia produce monopoly

Anti-mafia police arrested at least 67 suspected mobsters in pre-dawn raids yesterday, dismantling an alleged alliance of Italy's three main crime syndicates to virtually monopolise southern produce markets, officials said.

The Sicilian Mafia, the Calabrian 'ndrangheta crime syndicate and the Naples-area Camorra dropped traditional rivalries to join forces to control a monopoly on fruit and vegetable sales, distribution and transport throughout central and southern Italy, police General Antonio Girone said.

The hub was the sprawling market of Fondi, a town midway between Rome and Naples described as Europe's largest wholesale produce market. Authorities seized rocket and grenade launchers in the raids, and officers kicked in balcony doors, leapt over fences surrounding villas and hustled away the suspects.

Among those arrested was Paolo Schiavone, son of imprisoned mobster Francesco Schiavone, reputedly one of the top bosses of the ruthless Casalesi crime clan based in Caserta.

Paolo Schiavone had just stepped on to the docks of Naples at the end of a honeymoon cruise that had taken him around the Mediterranean when officers handcuffed him, Caserta police special operations chief Rodolfo Ruperti said.

The alleged ring was exposed after police began investigating the 2002 attempted murder of a produce delivery truck driver.

The teaming up of the crime syndicates is especially worrying to investigators, General Girone said, "because as in any military alliance, whenever there is more strength, it becomes more resistant" to law enforcement. In some cases, hidden among the produce being transported across Italy were weapons, investigators said. The alleged consortium of mobsters also amounted to a kind of control on consumers' wallets and purses.

Using wire taps, investigators discovered "how the Camorra terrorised those in the transport sector" to make sure their own trucking companies carried the produce from farms throughout southern Italy and that vendors agreed to the prices on their fruit and vegetables, Mr Ruperti said.