John Dickie at the BBC News offers an interesting piece on organized crime in
The biggest cocaine smugglers in
Europe are the 'Ndrangheta, a mafia from the "toe of Italy", Calabria. They may
not be as well known as their Sicilian counterparts but their drugs and
extortion business is worth billions of euros. When cornered their bosses hole
up in secret bunkers.
I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see sunlight. Since dead of night I had been crawling through tunnels strewn with rat excrement, personal effects and the paraphernalia of the cocaine business.
The dust and damp were choking. How long had I been underground? Four hours? Five? Eight? Then at last, filthy, tired, and disorientated, I surfaced into a gorgeous mountain landscape, and a breeze bearing the perfume of wild oregano.
I felt as if I had just escaped a brush with insanity, with evil.
The tunnels were in the town of Plati, on Aspromonte, the "harsh mountain" that dominates the landscape at the very toe-tip of Italy's boot.
Plati has been notorious for a century as a stronghold of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia.
Its bosses are among the world's leading cocaine
traffickers, and they have particularly strong links to the 'Ndrangheta's
outposts in Australia.
You can read the rest of the piece and watch a clip from the BBC documentary via the below link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22315469
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