Italian mafia don nicknamed the 'king of cocaine' arrested in Brazil
A mafia drug baron nicknamed the King of Cocaine, who is Italy’s second most wanted fugitive, has been arrested in Brazil after more than two decades on the run.
Rocco Morabito is a senior figure in the ‘Ndrangheta, the organised crime network from Calabria that has extended its reach across the globe and makes billions of euros a year from trafficking cocaine from South America to Europe.
He is considered to be the main broker between South American drug cartels and the multiple clans that make up the ‘Ndrangheta.
He is now expected to be extradited to Italy, where he was convicted in absentia of drug trafficking and mafia association and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Morabito “was considered the second most wanted criminal in Italy and accused of involvement with the 'Ndrangheta, considered one of the largest and most powerful criminal organisations in the world,” the Brazilian justice ministry said in a statement.
Morabito is nicknamed by his criminal associates U Tamunga – a Calabrian dialect rendition of DKW Munga, a type of German four-wheel-drive jeep that he used to drive.
In an operation involving Italian police, Brazilian police, the FBI and the US Drug Enforcement Agency, Morabito was found in a hotel in the city of João Pessoa, the capital of Paraiba state, on the northwest coast of Brazil.
“We put in a lot of investigative work to achieve this result,” said Giovanni Bombardieri, a senior anti-mafia prosecutor in Calabria. “We had been on his trail for some time.”
Morabito had been captured before – he was arrested in 2017 in a hotel in Montevideo in Uruguay after having been on the run for 23 years.
But two years later, while in custody and waiting to be extradited to Italy, he escaped from prison by crawling through a hole in the roof.
“Rocco Morabito is a big shot. Apart from being Italy’s number two most wanted fugitive, he is also considered one of the most important narcotraffickers of the clans,” Anna Sergi, an expert on the ‘Ndrangheta and a professor in criminology at Essex University, told The Telegraph.
“He ‘grew up’ in Milan, criminally speaking, and this gave him access to the cocaine business early on.”
The mafia boss is a cousin of the much-feared Giuseppe Morabito, nicknamed in Calabrian dialect U Tiradrittu – the one who shoots straight.
“Giuseppe Morabito is certainly one of the most notorious bosses of the ‘Ndrangheta and one of the most influential,” bringing clans from across Calabria into the drug trade, said Prof Sergi.
Earlier this year, hundreds of alleged members of the ‘Ndrangheta went on trial in a specially-built court room in Calabria in the biggest mafia trial for decades, involving hundreds of witnesses and lawyers.
Italy’s most notorious fugitive remains Matteo Messina Denaro, the alleged head of the Cosa Nostra mafia in Sicily, who has been on the run for more than 25 years.
His ability to elude capture has earned him almost mythical status and he has not been seen in public for years.
He is alleged to have killed up to 50 people and once boasted: “I filled a cemetery all by myself.”
