The Carabinieri of the Catanzaro Investigative Unit have implemented two measures to reinstate the precautionary measure in prison, issued by the local Review Court, against two subjects held responsible for “mafia-type association”, as well as “extortion” and “personal injury”, aggravated by the mafia method.
The two had already been arrested on February 27th together with twenty-one other people, in various capacities seriously suspected of “mafia-type association”, “extortion”, “robbery”, “usury”, “personal injury”, “fraud”, “criminal association”, “self-laundering” and “fraudulent transfer of values”, crimes also aggravated by mafia purposes and/or methods. Against them, the Court of Review had partially reformed the precautionary measure, considering the lack of circumstantial gravity of crime in relation to the criminal hypotheses of the mafia-type association and the aggravating circumstances of the so-called. mafia methods.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office – District Anti-Mafia Directorate appealed against this provision to the Supreme Court: last July, the Supreme Court annulled the order of the Review Court with postponement. The Court of Review, during the referral, confirmed the original order of the investigating judge with respect to both the dispute relating to membership of the mafia association, locally called the “Gagliano clan”, and the aggravating circumstance of the use of the mafia method, thus ordering precautionary custody in prison.
The same fate had befallen, at the end of last September, another suspect: although he had received a precautionary custody order in prison, as he was considered seriously suspected of belonging to the same mafia-type association, he was released from prison due to the annulment of the restrictive measure by the Review Court. Also on that occasion, the District Attorney’s Office appealed to the Supreme Court which, accepting it, sent the review back to the District Court for a new ruling and, consequently, the original precautionary measure in prison was reinstated.
The complex investigative activity, conducted with the direction and coordination of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Catanzaro and delegated to the Carabinieri of the Provincial Command, had covered a long period of time and had been developed mainly through complex interceptions and field verification activities, which had made it possible to outline the circumstantial gravity regarding the operations, since 2014, of the historic group of the so-called “Gaglianesi” clan active in the capital and dedicated to a variety of crimes against property and the person, under the influence of the ‘Ndrangheta clubs of Isola Capo Rizzuto and San Leonardo di Cutro (KR), as well as its connections with other Calabrian gangs.