Operation Athena: the Agrifruit company returned to its rightful owners. The Court of Review of Catanzaro, thus deciding at the hearing of 18 August, at the request of the defenders, the lawyers Enzo Belvedere and Pasquale Filippelli, has returned the Agrifruit Agricultural Company note to its rightful owners, the Laino brothers. Believing that the company was compendium of crime, the Gip of the Court of Catanzaro, had ordered the seizure, together with the personal precautionary measures. Having challenged the two measures, personal, for fictitious registration of goods and real, the Review confirmed both measures, annulling all the measures ordered against the Lainos.
The investigation
The “Athena” operation was launched at dawn on June 30, 2023, in Cassano and other centers in the province of Cosenza, during which the Lauropoli gang was “beheaded”. Hundreds of Carabinieri from the Operational Department Investigative Unit – Provincial Command of Cosenza, the State Police with the staff of the Mobile Squads of Cosenza and Catanzaro and the Central Operational Service of Rome, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office – District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Catanzaro, were on the field by the prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, they implemented the precautionary order, issued by the Gip at the Court of Catanzaro, against 68 suspects, on the basis of the deemed existence of serious indications regarding the crimes, hypothesized for various reasons, against them, including, ‘Ndrangheta-type association, criminal association aimed at drug trafficking, aggravated by mafia purposes, as well as in relation to multiple extortions with particular regard to companies operating in the tourism and agricultural sector, aiding and abetting fugitives and numerous other crimes , also aggravated by the mafia methods and purposes.