Italian police on Tuesday busted a drug trafficking and distribution gang operating in Rome and linked to the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia.
Police arrested 21 people in the Italian capital and Reggio Calabria.
Police said the gang moved huge quantities of drugs using South American intermediaries and mules.
The drugs were distributed in Rome and its surrounding province, police said.
On some occasions the drugs were hidden in phials of plant-therapy products, police said.
Two people managed the traffic despite being incarcerated, in Frosinone and Terni respectively, police said.
They issued orders to underlings who handled the distribution, said officers.
'Ndrangheta is Italy's richest and most powerful mafia.
It has outstripped Sicily's Cosa Nostra thanks to its control of the European cocaine trade, from South America.
All its activities have been estimated to be worth the equivalent of at least three per cent of Italian GDP.
According to a 2013 "Threat Assessment on Italian Organised Crime" by Europol and the Guardia di Finanza, 'Ndrangheta income was around $55 billion in 2008.
Its tentacles have spread from its southern Italian base to central and northern Italy, northern Europe, North and South America and Australia, among other areas.
Its influence is especially strong in the affluent northern Italian regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna, but it has also spread to Lazio and Rome.
Italy's third major mafia is the Camorra, based in and around Naples.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
