Despite past Camorra wars that left hundreds of dead on the pavement, the Camorra clans of Secondigliano have decided in recent years to find an agreement to jointly manage a series of businesses without clashes.
These include infiltrating real estate auctions to purchase houses, businesses, and shops at bargain prices, as well as the international trafficking of contraband cigarettes from Bulgaria.
The clan had financed, with the complicity of the famous neomelodic singer Tony Colombio and his wife, the construction of a cigarette factory. The two were arrested together with the other 25.
For this reason, by delegation of the acting Attorney General Napoli This morning the Carabinieri of the Special Operations Group and the Provincial Command of Naples executed a precautionary custody order, issued by the GIP of Naples at the request of the local District Anti-Mafia Directorate against 27 suspects.
All seriously accused, to varying degrees, of the crimes of mafia association, external complicity in mafia association, aggravated extortion, aggravated private violence, criminal association aimed at auction-rigging aggravated facilitated, criminal association aggravated by having facilitated a mafia clan and by the transnational nature aimed at the smuggling of foreign manufactured tobacco.
At the same time, a precautionary seizure order was executed on movable and immovable assets for a total value of approximately 8 million euros.
The investigations, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples, aimed at reconstructing the operations of the Di Lauro clan in the period between 2017 and 2021, in continuity with the investigations for the capture of the fugitive Marco Di Lauro (arrested on March 2, 2019), documented the organizational restructuring of the coterie while respecting the traditional rules imposed by Paolo Di Lauro (Ciruzzo or Millionaire detained at 41bis OP since 2005 and not investigated), including the assumption of command by his older, non-detained brother.
The investigations have allowed us to reconstruct, in addition to the traditional illicit activities such as drugs, extortion and others, including threats to the family members of a collaborator of justice, a real “entrepreneurial turning point” which is the basic choice of the Di Lauro clan, which, almost completely abandoning the military option, saw the gang defeated by the Scissionisti in the bloody feuds for control of the territory and drug dealing areas.
In this strategic perspective, we can place the entrepreneurial and financial activities, with huge investments in the sector of judicial real estate auctions, in which the affiliates carried out conducts of disturbed freedom of auctions, through threats addressed to other participants to force them not to show up, effectively allowing the emissaries of the association to win the properties, the subsequent resale of which would have financed the further illicit activities of the association.
In this context, a sort of joint venture was detected, or rather a real organic alliance or partnership, as a form of close collaboration between various organizations operating in Secondigliano, such as the Licciardi and the Vinella Grassi, aimed at achieving common economic interests such as the awarding of real estate auctions or the intervention for the revocation of extortion requests addressed to entrepreneurs close to the Di Lauro clan by third-party criminal organizations.
Investments in less risky activities than in the past also involved the creation of some companies fictitiously registered in the name of third parties (now seized), through which the organization managed a well-known gym, a betting shop and some supermarkets as well as the smuggling sector of foreign manufactured tobacco.
In fact, in this last illegal activity the existence of a stable and transnational criminal association, directed by the Di Lauro clan, has been crystallized, aimed at tobacco trafficking, with imports from Eastern European countries, such as Bulgaria and Ukraine of approximately 1500 kg of cigarettes, characterized by a distribution system on the Campania market, through a network of wholesalers who supplied, on consignment, the retailers and from whom, on a weekly basis, the sums of money relating to the payment of the supplies were withdrawn.
A well-known neomelodic singer and his wife were also involved
The investigations also made it possible to clarify how the organization, financed by the top of the Di Lauro clan, by a well-known neo-melodic singer and his wife, with a total sum of approximately 500.000 euros, had proceeded, after having acquired the necessary materials and machinery, to set up a cigarette factory, which was subsequently seized, where, by importing raw tobacco from abroad, they could directly package the packets of cigarettes to resell in the national territory or export abroad.
Corleone clothing brand and 9mm energy drink created
The entrepreneurial aspiration of the DI LAURO clan also included investments in clothing companies and, together with the aforementioned neo melodic singer, the creation of a clothing brand registered with trademark Corleone, as well as in the creation of a energy drink called 9 mm, evocative and almost winking at the world of organised crime.
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