Five days
4,000 miles
Three countries
That equals three Mafia fugitives who were found this month
And each of these freshly bagged major Italian mobsters comes with an incredible story
One was notorious for hoarding priceless paintings by Vincent
Van Gogh that had been stolen in a famous Amsterdam art heist
but when arrested in Dubai had garish art of cartel boss Pablo Escobar on his wall
Another was a veteran mob boss who, when in Italy, rode around in an armoured car
but when tracked down in a foreign capital was caught strolling down the street on his own
And the third, well, the third wasn’t a man of the mob at all
Rather a woman, who had control of one of the most fearsome Mafia organizations in modern times
Known as the Godmother
The Mob Reporter here with news of three major mob figures whose time on the run ended abruptly
in quick succession this month and the stories of who they really are,
and why they were among the world’s most wanted Let me tell you about it
I’ll begin with the last to be caught
On Aug. 7, 2021, a powerful and feared boss of the Camorra
Maria Licciardi was arrested in Rome at the airport in Italy’s capital,
as she was trying to fly out to visit her daughter in Malaga, Spain
The world has been transfixed by Licciardi as a rare female boss in the muscular,
macho world of the Mafia The Camorra is the Mafia
that formed in the region around Naples and sits alongside the Cosa Nostra of Sicily
and the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria as among the oldest and most powerful Mafia organizations
Now 70 years old, Licciardi has been a powerful Camorra figure for 30 years
Daughter of a mobster, wife of a mobster, sister of two mobsters
she was born and raised in gangster life in the same neighborhood where
she went on to rule it’s streets She seized the reins of her family’s
clan after the arrest of her brother. the boss of the Licciardi clan, in 1993
After he died in prison shortly after, her control was complete
Outside observers were astounded a woman would be just as brutal
and strong — perhaps more so — than the men who had preceded her.
And the men who challenged her As well as strong and decisive,
she was careful, cunning, calculating If any of the traditional men of the
Mafia objected, the strong financial outlook under her management pushed concerns aside
She boosted their heroin and cocaine trade and so much more
Her rise was helped by disbelief a woman was the real boss
She had one quality most male bosses of the Camorra lacked: discretion
She avoided public attention, flash, grandstanding She was the invisible boss of the most
powerful criminal organization in Naples and the region of Campania
It took police six years to figure out who she really was
That she was much more than a grieving widow By the time they did, they weren’t even sure
what she looked like, as the only sure photo they had was years old
It wasn’t until 1999 when a split in a Camorra alliance sparked a brutal and deadly war that
police attention focussed clearly on Licciardi Even then she eluded them. She remained
frustratingly out of their reach Despite being named as one of
Italy’s most wanted, despite roadblocks and checkpoints, raids, and searches
she was nowhere to be found, even though she really was, having not left her neighborhood
She was variously called The Little Girl, because of her short height,
The Princess, The Godmother, the Queen of Naples She was finally first arrested and charged
in June 2001 at the age of 50, when found as a passenger in a car stopped by police
She continued to lead from prison until her release after eight years
In 2019, she was again targeted for arrest, and she returned to the most dangerous fugitives list
Again, she couldn’t be found A huge police blitz in the middle
of the night in June that year came up empty despite firm intelligence on where she was staying
She remained free, until she tried to fly to Spain.
Three days before the spectacular arrest of Licciardi, came news of the arrest of another
infamous Camorra figure Raffaele Imperiale
He too is internationally notorious mostly because he kept two stolen masterpieces in
his lair, works by one of history’s great painters Unlike the other two arrested this month,
the 46-year-old Imperiale wasn’t a mob boss just a highly prodigious Camorra drug baron,
known as a super-narco His climb up the underworld ladder
came not from muscle, but business sense not scrapping on the streets of Naples,
but building drug contacts while living abroad in the Netherlands, where he moved to in the 1990s
As the owner of a coffeeshop in Amsterdam where drugs were sold,
he built criminal contacts with Dutch traffickers
South American suppliers, and Camorra distributors in his homeland with the powerful Di Lauro clan
By the early years of the 2000s, he had become an important link in bulk cocaine shipments
arriving in Europe from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, authorities said
For example, police say Imperiale was behind one of the most brazen,
large drug shipments ever discovered in Europe the 2013 discovery of 1.3 tonnes of cocaine
aboard a regularly scheduled Air France jet from Venezuela
The load worth an estimated $270 million was stuffed into
30 unregistered suitcases smuggled onboard and only discovered after the plane arrived in Paris
Now, one way he invested ill-gotten gains was to buy two Van Gogh masterpieces on the black market
after they were stolen from a museum in a clever heist in 2002
The paintings were recovered in 2016 in a police raid on a cottage in a seafront town near Naples
The same town where he was born
That was the same year he was placed on the most dangerous fugitives list
Imperiale recently told an Italian newspaper he bought the paintings as a passionate lover of art
His luxurious five-years on the run ended on Aug. 4
In Dubai he was using the alias Antonio Rocco and changed cars daily to hide his movement
He lived in an isolated home where those approaching could be monitored
For a full week, Dubai police’s high-tech tools kept him under close surveillance around the clock
A large SWAT team then swooped into his house,
arresting him and his right-hand man, Raffaele Mauriello, police said
His home was packed with the luxuries of extreme wealth
Large sums of cash in various denominations, luxury watches, valuable collectibles,
including more art although he expanded
his taste from a classic master to this pop-art homage to narco-boss Pablo Escobar
That he was hiding in Dubai wasn’t a shot in the dark
He had been investing his money in property in the United Arab Emirates for some time
and it had long been said he was in hiding there, living for a spell in the The Burj Khalifa
the distinctive, exclusive skyscraper in Dubai that is the world’s tallest building,
and bouncing between luxury villas and apartments Two months ago, a delegation of Italian
police visited the United Arab Emirates to meet with Dubai police
About the same time, Imperiale was bumped up to the very top-six of the most wanted list
That police visit surely wasn’t a coincidence.
August started in fine fashion for anti-Mafia police
It is said that “good things come in threes,” and from their perspective, the first of the
three significant busts arrived on Aug. 3 with the arrest of Domenico Paviglianiti
It is probably a coincidence he was arrested in Spain the same country where Licciardi was headed
but that’s where Paviglianiti was tracked down He was pinched off the street as he strolled
through Madrid, Spain’s capital, by police who snuck up behind him
He didn’t struggle Authorities say he
was carrying false Portuguese identity papers, six cell phones and almost €6,000 euros in cash
in €200-euro bills, the highest denomination euro note still in production.
A search of his apartment found five more phones
Unlike the others, Paviglianiti, now 60, doesn’t have a large international profile
well, he didn’t until this arrest but in Italy he was considered an
important boss of the ‘Ndrangheta and wanted for a number of charges
Police say he may be responsible for as many as 130 mob murders
One of four brothers, he is named as boss of the clan that bears his family name
an organization that seized control of several towns a few miles southeast of Reggio Calabria,
including San Lorenzo, Bagaladi and Condofuri His clan became the dominant power in the
area in the 1980s, during what is called the Second ‘Ndrangheta War
a furious conflict that reorganized the power structure of the Reggio clans
A thousand people may have died in the drawn-out struggle
But not Domenico Paviglianiti. He allied himself with the more powerful De Stefano clan
and rode out the war in an armoured car, while the manpower and resources of his local rivals eroded
His clan infiltrated municipal affairs to a remarkable degree. Corruption became a specialty
In 2014, for instance, a large police operation arrested 52 people linked to the clan among them was a
corrupted member of the Italian Coast Guard In 2016, along with Paviglianiti mobsters,
police arrested the mayor, deputy mayor, town councillor and businessmen from a nearby town
Like a number of other visionary ‘Ndrangheta leaders, Paviglianiti
recognized the vast economic potential of Italy’s north and he swooped into Lombardy
building relationships and allies around Milan
There, police say, the clan engaged in drug trafficking and arms dealing,
moving substantial loads of heroin from Turkey and Pakistan and cocaine from Peru
and other South American countries It made clan members rich and — like
many investors — they looked to the energy and resource sectors
In 2018, members of his family and members of his clan were busted for forcing their way
into large government wind farm contracts Another mayor was among those arrested.
The police probe was called Operation Gone With the Wind. How’s that for green energy?
And last year, authorities said the clan had penetrated mining
and construction sectors in the north including the extraction of decorative
minerals from the Alps in Trentino Paviglianiti also had business in Spain
He was arrested there before, in 1996, and despite facing murder charges,
delayed his extradition for three years His lawyers convinced a court in Italy not
to sentence him to life in prison, saying it was a condition of his extradition
since Spain didn’t have life sentences at the time and the judiciary wanted no
harsher punishment than the maximum allowed in the jurisdiction where he was arrested
In 2019, a judge decided he had served enough of his sentence
He took the opportunity to flee the country before that sentencing calculation was found
to be an error. An honest mistake, surely. He was caught by a joint Spanish-Italian
police operation. After a year of looking,
officers first traced family members to Barcelona, on Spain’s northeastern coast
where he had apparently taken refuge for a period before relocating to the capital
In Madrid, police reportedly found him living on Don Quixote Street, sharing an apartment
with a woman from South America and her son. Unlike Imperiale’s luxurious surroundings,
Paviglianiti was living in a neighborhood originally built as a slum
Police watched him for several days to be sure it was him.
He had packed on a lot of weight. They reportedly saw nothing of substance in his quiet life
When he walked out of his apartment and started strolling down the street, officers moved in
It was perhaps a fortunate time to move in. Given that he carried false ID, loads of cash
and so many phones, he might well have been leaving for a new hiding place
He is wanted for Mafia association, homicide, and drug trafficking
All three of these fugitives were at or near the top of Italy’s most wanted list
That list just got significantly shorter.
And a little less interesting
Thanks for watching