In the environments of the ‘Ndrangheta, and also in Reggio Calabria and its province, Antonino (75 years old), Pietro (74 years oldthe most charismatic, placed under house arrest for a few days for serious health problems), Michele (69 years old) and Franco Labate (58 years old)are known with the nickname “Ti Mangiu”.
An appellation that well defines the criminal profile of the four brothers, whose “family” dominates affairs, legal and illegal, for almost a century on the southern suburbs of Reggio Calabria. According to the investigations, the room (territorial vertical unit on which the individual gangs predominate) of the labate is broken in the partition of the territory on the scheme of Roman cardi – from the north to the south – starting from the east bank of the Calopinace stream, up to the fence network of the Strait airport airport: Viale Galileo Galilei, with a natural continuation on Viale Aldo Moro, viale Calabria and Viale Sbarre Central – Cardi, in fact – conclude their linear development close to the Sant’Agata stream, north limit of the airport area.
The Labate have already been known since the 1930s to the judicial chronicles, and like other exponents of the ‘Ndrangheta Reggina – until the 1950s – they are essentially interested in breeding and commerce of cattle, extortion, abusive guardia to agricultural land, abigeate and clandestine slaughter. A cluster of crimes which, however, was radically replaced by the rapid transformation of their territory of competence: in 1960 Omeca (formerly Ansaldo Breda, today Hitachi Rail, which occupies about six hundred employees) opens, began the assault of the construction of the building to agricultural land, an entire neighborhood stands – the “Gebbione” – of public housing. The feverish economic activity, the opening of small commercial and service companies, pave the way for the opportunities of ‘modernization of the Labate clan. Along the three cardi, it is a continuous flourishing of construction sites, bars, restaurants, butchers, craft activities, a trigger ideal for growing the coffers of the ‘Ndrangheta, which soon puts their hands inside each activity, with preventive requests for bribes and proposals to make a company “with people linked to its exponents.
Antonino, Pietro, Michele and Franco Labate – as the investigators say – adopt a control of the territory in a suffocating way, moving with intelligence and firmness in the tangle of the precarious balances of the ‘Reggio Mandate Centrò of the’ Ndrangheta: they avoid, above all, to get involved in the war of ‘Ndrangheta of the 80s among the’ Cartate Cape impleme Stefano-Integano-Lylon-Latella, opposed by the ‘condello-Imerti-Serraino family, which will leave the streets of Reggio Calabria long and its province-from 10 October 1985, the date of the killing of the boss Paolo De Stefano, to August 9, 1991, the murder of the judge Antonino Scopelliti-about a thousand deaths killed. A non -alignment, this, which will push high the economic power and the criminal prestige of the Labate who – as the Prosecutor of Giuseppe Lombardo says – will transform the ‘Gebbionè into the richest entrepreneurial area of Reggio Calabria.