It is becoming more and more obvious that the Mafiosi in this country are not just hiding in the underground. The head of the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol), Nicoletta della Valle, even says: “We have a real problem that we can only solve with more national and international cooperation.” Various organizations have settled in Switzerland and do their criminal business. These are the most important:
‘Ndrangheta
The ‘Ndrangheta is the association of the Calabrian Mafia. With an annual turnover of over 50 billion euros, it is considered the most powerful Mafia organization in Europe. Your main sources of income: drug and arms trafficking, money laundering and illegal waste disposal. The clan is considered to be one of the most powerful cocaine importers in the world.
The family is the center of the ‘Ndrangheta clan. The blood ties not only define membership, but also relationships within the clan. The Fedpol assumes that around 400 Mafiosi are organized in 20 clans in Switzerland that belong to the ‘Ndrangheta. Children and young people are raised to be loyal to their families. Serving her is considered the most important commandment – even if one acts illegally in the process. With this loyalty the clans secure their criminal activities.
According to the police authority, the ‘Ndrangheta is most strongly represented in Switzerland. There have been ‘Ndrangheta clans in this country since at least the late 1980s. At that time, Italian prosecutors had filed international requests for legal assistance and investigated them in Switzerland. There were repeated arrests and trials in this country. In 2014, the federal police filmed several ‘Ndrangheta mafiosi at a secret meeting in Frauenfeld TG. The meeting was disguised as a boccia event.
In 2020, raids against the mafia organization ‘Ndrangheta resulted in 75 arrests in Switzerland and Italy. Several house searches were carried out in Solothurn, Zug and Ticino and one person was arrested.
The newspaper reported recently «Tagblatt» about a boss of the ‘Ndrangheta clan of the Anello-Fruci from Calabria. Clan boss Rocco Anello is said to have traveled personally to Switzerland time and again to visit his middlemen and to do crooked business. Anello also had two lovers of his wife Angela executed and their bodies dismembered and disposed of.
Camorra
The Camorra is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy. It has existed since the 16th century and has its roots mainly in Naples and the Campania region. Organized in autonomous clans, it primarily recruits young people because of the high unemployment in southern Italy. The Camorra is involved in the drug and arms trade and is big in the extortion business. Like other criminal organizations, the Camorra is no longer just raging in its regional area of domination and has spread throughout Europe – including Switzerland.
In 2020, the federal prosecutor sentenced two Camorra aides for money laundering to a conditional prison sentence of six months each. The two people were accused of being part of a group that imported a total of around 28 million euros into Switzerland between 2005 and 2015. Your goal: to launder the money.
The organization also gained notoriety through the Mafia series “Gomorrah”, which shows the murderous everyday life of the Camorra in a fairly authentic way. The successful series is based on the bestseller of the same name by the Italian author Roberto Saviano. He paid a high price for the publication of the book: Because he relentlessly exposed the acts of the Camorra in his book, the Mafia critic has been living in constant mortal danger for years.
Cosa Nostra
The mafia has its origins in Sicily. Today the Sicilian Mafia is also known as Cosa Nostra. To this day, extortion is one of their main sources of income. Smuggling and arms trafficking also play a role, especially heroin, which Cosa Nostra has been distributing in America and Europe since the 1960s.
The Cosa Nostra is organized in a strictly hierarchical manner. The members of the mafia are divided into so-called families, each family has a capo as a boss. Above all stands the “capo dei capi”, the leader of the leaders.
Sacra Corona Unita
The Sacra Corona Unita or Mafia pugliese or SCU is a Mafia organization that comes from Apulia. It is organized federally in independent clans. These, in turn, are structured in a strongly hierarchical manner.
The organization has good connections to organized crime in Colombia and Albania. The Sacra Corona Unita stands above all for forced prostitution and drug trafficking. She is also known for her brutality in internal disputes. Victims of such confrontations are often mutilated and then killed.
For years, the Sacra Corona Unita used Switzerland as a hub for money laundering. In the 1990s, criminal funds from the criminal organizations Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita were smuggled into the Swiss banking system via money exchange offices in Ticino.
Couriers brought huge amounts of cash from Italy across the border. In Lugano, the mafia funds were finally distributed to the bank accounts of intermediaries and companies and fed into the legal financial cycle. The funds were then invested in the black market for cigarettes. Up until the beginning of 2001, practically the entire cash flow for cigarette smuggling via Montenegro from Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita was processed through the Swiss financial center. (oco)