Rocco Morabito, one of Italy’s most wanted mafia bosses, arrested in Brazil

ROMA.- In a new blow to the ‘Ndrangheta, the powerful Calabrian mafia, Rocco Morabito was arrested yesterday in Brazil, the second most wanted fugitive in Italy after Matteo Messina Silver, the inhalable super head of Cosa Nostra Siciliana (both on the list of the ten most dangerous people in the world).

Nicknamed “u’tamunga” and considered the “king of cocaine” since the 1990s, while in Milan he was dealing with drug trafficking from South America, Morabito was arrested in the city of João Pessoa, in Brazil, thanks to a joint operation of the anti-mafia command of the Italian riflemen, the FBI, the DEA and the Brazilian federal police.

The 54-year-old lover of luxury and a bizarre life, the superboss was arrested along with another criminal of Calabrian origin, Vincenzo Pasquini, his right hand.

Point of reference for the South American drug cartels and with many contacts, Morabito in 2019 had managed to escape from a prison in Montevideo, In Uruguay, where he spent two years bribing some guards and building a tunnel, a few days before being extradited to Italy.

Since 1994, in fact, On his shoulders is a 30-year prison sentence for gangster-type association and international drug trafficking, which he will probably now execute. As in a film more than 25 years ago, he decides to leave Italy and makes his footprints disappear in Latin America, first by hiding in Brazil with his historical partner, Paula María de Olivera Correia, a naturalized Angolan and later in Uruguay.

Lover of luxury, he then lived in Punta del Este, using a fake Brazilian passport with the name of Francisco Antonio Capeletto Souza. He resided in a mansion with a swimming pool in the exclusive Beverly Hills neighborhood, posing as a businessman devoted to importing and exporting soybeans.

As the newspaper reminds us The morning, after 23 years on the run, Morabito was captured in Montevideo in September 2017, after making the mistake of enrolling your daughter in school under her real name. But he managed to escape from Montevideo central prison on June 24, 2019, digging a tunnel with three other inmates, also thanks to the help of members of the Bellocco clan, who live between Argentina and Uruguay. .

15 prison officers were investigated for this escape and a year later he was arrested in Argentina Ferdinando Sarago, also a member of the ‘Ndrangheta. As he remembered Corriere della Sera, according to the judicial authorities It was Sarago who put the sum of 50,000 euros in the Uruguayan prison which was used to bribe the agents. Previously, this subject had participated in a meeting in a restaurant in Puerto Madero, with another Calabrian, Carmelo Aglioti, who a few days earlier had spoken with Morabito’s brother.

With many contacts throughout Latin America, after his incredible escape from Montevideo prison, the super-pivot has once again vanished into nothingness. But the police, like in a movie, continued to follow him throughout Latin America. YesThanks to an international collaboration, they found him, this time in a hotel in Joao Pessoa, capital of the state of Paraiba, in northern Brazil.. News of the arrest of the country’s second most wanted person has had a big impact in Italy.

Born in Africo, in the province of Reggio Calabria, “u’tamunga” is the cousin of another famous historical boss of the dreaded ‘Ndrangheta, Giuseppe Morabito, arrested in 2014 after being on the run for 12 years.

Conocé The Trust Project