The 'Ndrangheta (, , ) is an Italian Mafia Cult-type organized crime syndicate based in the peninsular region of Calabria and dating back to the 18th century. It is considered one of the most powerful organized crime groups in the world. Since the 1950s, following wide-scale emigration from Calabria, the organization has established itself worldwide. It is characterized by a horizontal structure made up of autonomous clans known as ndrine, based almost exclusively on blood ties. Its main activity is drug trafficking, on which it has a near monopoly in Europe, but it also deals with arms trafficking, money laundering, racketeering, extortion, loan sharking, and prostitution. The 'Ndrangheta enjoys a privileged relationship with the main South American cartels, which consider it their most reliable European partner.
It is capable of heavily influencing local and national politics and infiltrating large sectors of the legal economy. In 2013 they purportedly made €53 billion, according to a study from Demoskopika Research Institute. A US diplomat estimated that the organization's drug trafficking, extortion and money laundering activities accounted for at least three percent of Italy's GDP in 2010.
History
Origin
The 'Ndrangheta was already known during the reign of the Bourbons of Naples. In the spring of 1792, the first official report on the organisation was published, and a mission as "Royal Visitor" was entrusted to Giuseppe Maria Galanti; he travelled throughout most of Calabria, often also making use of reports of locals deemed reliable and trusted. This work has been analyzed by various contemporary historians. Luca Addante writes in the introduction to the re-edition of Galanti's report ("Giornale di viaggio in Calabria", Rubbettino Editore, 2008): "the murders, thefts, the kidnappings were infinite; the ignorance of the clergy was scandalous; the village notables, obsessed with the idea of enriching themselves and then ennobling themselves, rapacious monopolizers of local administrations, who grew up in the shadow of a decadent nobility whose remains were being prepared."
Galanti reported disturbing crime phenomena, noting how the inefficient administration of justice, the corruption and the monopoly of the barons, was starting to produce cases, as in Maida, of "a small bunch of young, freeloaded young men who commit violence with the use of firearms. Justice is idle because without force and without a system malicious people become policemen (a sort of urban guard)." In the District of Gerace, "the raids of the criminals in the countryside are general. Almost all the militiamen are the most troublemakers in the province because the criminals and the debtors adopt this profession and are guaranteed by commanders in contempt of the laws. With this, the crimes, which grow every day".
In 1861, the prefect of Reggio Calabria already noticed the presence of so-called camorristi, a term used at the time since there was no formal name for the phenomenon in Calabria (the Camorra was the older and better known criminal organization in Naples).Behan, The Camorra, pp. 9–10 Since the 1880s, there is ample evidence of 'Ndrangheta-type groups in police reports and sentences by local courts. At the time they were often being referred to as the picciotteria, onorata società (honoured society) or camorra and mafia. These secret societies in the areas of Calabria rich in olives and vines were distinct from the often anarchic forms of banditry and were organized hierarchically with a code of conduct that included omertà – the code of silence – according to a sentence from the court in Reggio Calabria in 1890. An 1897 sentence from the court in Palmi mentioned a written code of rules found in the village of Seminara based on honour, secrecy, violence, solidarity (often based on blood relationships) and mutual assistance.