Palermo’s anti-mafia unit has arrested who they suspect is the new head of the Sicilian mafia group Cosa Nostra along with 45 other alleged mobsters.

Settimo Mineo, an 80-year-old jeweller who was allegedly promoted to lead the criminal organisation following the death of former boss Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina in 2017, was among those arrested on Tuesday.

Mineo had been previously sentenced to five years in jail for mafia-related crimes in a trial related to the death of anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone. He was arrested again in 2006 and spent 11 years in jail.

Italian deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio wrote in an Instagram post: "The arrests ... represent one of the biggest blows inflicted on the mafia by the state. Mineo had been elected 'heir' of Toto Riina after his death."

"There is no more room for this type of scum in Italy," he added.

A police source told Reuters that Mineo was elected as the new boss during a gathering of mob families last May. The first one to take place in more than 25 years.

The meeting of the Cosa Nostra cupola (hierarchy) was believed to be a sign that the group was trying to rebuild.

"With an extraordinary operation in the Palermo province, the police have dismantled Cosa Nostra's new 'cupola'," wrote Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Twitter.

The suspects are accused of being “associated with the mafia and aggravated extortion”</s>Italian police have arrested new Cosa Nostra boss Settimino Mineo and dozens of other suspects in a major operation, officials said today.

Police arrested 80-year-old Mineo in Palermo, Sicily just before he was due to be officially anointed at a reconvened Mafia Commission, or Cupola, police said.

45 other suspects are being held on charges of extortion, illegal gun possession, arson, Mafia association and other crimes, investigators said.

Settimino Mineo being escorted by carabinieri as he left a police station today. Photo: Alessandro Fucarini/AFP

The Sicilian Mafia had managed to rebuild the Cupola after it had not met for years, Italian media reported – which was taken as a sign that the Sicilian clans had chosen to return to the structure of the past.

The Cupola was to appoint Mineo the official heir to notorious Mafia boss Toto Riina, who died in prison last year.

Mineo, officially a jeweller, was well known to police as a career criminal who had already been given a five-year sentence by the murdered anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

He was arrested again 12 years ago but then released after serving an 11-year-term.

A carabinieri video shared by Italian media showed the scale of yesterday’s anti-mafia operation.

"Police in Palermo have arrested 46 members of the mafia. They had replaced Totò Riina with Settimo Mineo to revive Cosa Nostra, but the state won. They will never give up – us neither!" wrote Nicola Morra, president of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Palermo’s local government decided yesterday to rename roads, streets and squares in honour of 48 victims of mafia on the island.
• Italy's 'Ndrangheta mafia 'on all continents' and still growing</s>Italian police have arrested the new head of the Sicilian mafia - just before he was due to be anointed the head of the feared Cosa Nostra.

Pictures show officers leading 80-year-old jeweller Settimo Mineo away after he was detained in the Italian island's capital, Palermo, this morning.

A further 45 other alleged mobsters were also rounded up in a powerful blow to organised crime on the Mediterranean island, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Tuesday, adding that there was 'no more room for this type of scum in Italy'.

Police say Mineo was already head of the Cosa Nostra (Our Thing) mafia in the Palermo region but was also just about to be officially anointed the overall 'boss of bosses' at a reconvened Mafia Commission or Cupola.

Police also arrested three other Cupola members in the swoop. The four senior Mafia leaders had all recently served prison time for their activities.

The previous boss of bosses, Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, died in prison last year after spending almost a quarter of century behind bars for ordering dozens of murders, including those of two of Italy's most famous anti-mob magistrates.

Dubbed The Beast, he was one of the most feared godfathers in the history of the Sicilian Mafia. He was buried in November last year in his hometown of Corleone, the real-life mafia hotbed made famous by the 'Godfather' films and book.

Riina had been serving 26 life sentences when he succumbed to cancer aged 87. His death fuelled speculation that it was the end for the Sicilian Mafia.

But a resurgent Cosa Nostra managed to rebuild the Cupola which met earlier this year for the first time since 1993 and was due to appoint Mineo official heir to the notorious mobster.

A police source said Mineo was elected boss at a meeting of provincial leaders of the Sicilian mafia on May 29.

Once all-powerful on Sicily, the world's most famous crime gang has been squeezed over the past two decades, with many bosses put behind bars, businesses sequestered and locals increasingly ready to defy it.

'With an extraordinary operation in the Palermo province, the police have dismantled Cosa Nostra's new 'cupola',' Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Twitter.

Mineo was sentenced to five years in jail for mafia-related crimes at the so-called 'maxi-trial' that ran from 1986-1992 and was spearheaded by prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Both Falcone and Borsellino were murdered in 1992 on Riina's orders after verdicts were delivered. Following their deaths, the state poured resources into the fight against the mob and ground down Cosa Nostra.

One prominent mafioso the police have been unable to capture is Matteo Messina Denaro, nicknamed 'Diabolik', who has been on the run since 1993 and comes from the province of Trapani in western Sicily. It was not clear if he attended the May meeting

'The arrests ... represent one of the biggest blows inflicted on the mafia by the state.

'Mineo had been elected "heir" of Toto Riina after his death. There is no more room for this type of scum in Italy,' Di Maio wrote on Instagram.

The suspects are accused of extortion, illegal gun possession, arson, Mafia association and other crimes, investigators said.

Police are due to release more details about their operation later in the day.

Cosa Nostra: How the 'octopus' reached into all areas of society during bloody reign of terror With Mafia king Toto Riina's death last year many speculated that it was game over for Sicily's once all-powerful Cosa Nostra. But a meeting in May of the organisation's cupola, or hierarchy, was seen by investigators as a sign the feared mobsters were looking to rebuild. 'Boss of bosses' Riina, who was nicknamed 'The Beast' because of his cruelty, led a reign of terror including the brutal daylight assassinations of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He died a year ago aged 87, just months after being caught on wiretaps in jail boasting afresh about his bloody crimes. 'Riina will go down in history as the man who destroyed Cosa Nostra,' Mafia expert Attilio Bolzoni said. 'With his strategy of bloody massacres in Sicily and across Italy... he turned an invisible Mafia visible, with hundreds, thousands of murders, carried out first with Kalashnikovs, then bombs.' Salvatore 'Toto' Riina in court during a preliminary hearing in Palermo, Sicily, Italy in 1993 'For the first time in history, the state reacted mercilessly,' Bolzoni said, with the arrest of hundreds of bosses and the introduction of harsh anti-mafia laws that saw imprisoned gangsters held in utter isolation. Caught and jailed in 1993 after nearly a quarter of a decade as a fugitive, his revenge was swift: Cosa Nostra launched a series of bombings in Rome, Milan and Florence that killed 10 people. But he was unable to stop the decimation of the crime group - once nicknamed 'the octopus' for its tentacled reach into all areas of society - which was gradually supplanted by the Camorra in Naples and 'Ndrangheta in Calabria. Multi-murderer playboy Messina Denaro, one of the world's most-wanted men, was seen last year by many as Riina's natural heir but has been on the run since 1993. And police now believe 80-year-old jeweller Settimo Mineo, arrested this morning in Palermo, was set to step into that role. Italy's high court caused outrage in 2017 when they ruled that Riina 'deserved to die with dignity' in his own home as he fought terminal cancer Last year prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio, who spent 20 years in the DDA organisation of anti-mafia prosecutors, warned the days of shootouts and car bombs may be gone, but Cosa Nostra has been growing fat instead on political deals. 'We have greatly weakened the military apparatus of the Mafia, the massacres are over, murders are rare. But the Mafia has undergone a genetic modification,' Cartosio told AFP in 2017. 'The political sector has lent itself greatly to... (organised crime's) infiltration of the social fabric' and, as a consequence, 'the Mafia presence in the political sphere is much greater than before,' he said. And the battle is not only against 'the octopus' but also the 'Stidda', a rival group formed by former Cosa Nostra members during the Second Mafia War of the early 1980s. 'The Mafia is less military, less bloody than before, but it's very efficient,' he said.</s>Italian police have arrested the new head of the Sicilian mafia - just before he was due to be officially anointed the 'boss of bosses' of the feared Cosa Nostra.

Pictures show 80-year-old jeweller Settimo Mineo being away after he was detained in the Italian island's capital, Palermo, this morning.

A further 45 other alleged mobsters were also rounded up in a powerful blow to organised crime on the Mediterranean island, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Tuesday, adding that there was 'no more room for this type of scum in Italy'.

Police say Mineo was already head of the Cosa Nostra (Our Thing) mafia in the Palermo region but was also just about to be anointed the overall 'boss of bosses' at a reconvened Mafia Commission or Cupola.

Police also arrested three other Cupola members in the swoop. The four senior Mafia leaders had all recently served prison time for their activities.

The previous godfather, Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, died in prison last year after spending almost a quarter of century behind bars for ordering dozens of murders, including those of two of Italy's most famous anti-mob magistrates.

Dubbed The Beast, he was one of the most feared leaders in the history of the Sicilian Mafia. He was buried in November last year in his hometown of Corleone, the real-life mafia hotbed made famous by the 'Godfather' films and book.

Riina had been serving 26 life sentences when he succumbed to cancer aged 87. His death fuelled speculation that it was the end for the Sicilian Mafia.

But a resurgent Cosa Nostra managed to rebuild the Cupola which met earlier this year for the first time since 1993 and was due to appoint Mineo official heir to the notorious mobster.

A police source said Mineo was elected boss at a meeting of provincial leaders of the Sicilian mafia on May 29.

Italian media reported that police obtained crucial information by tapping the phone of one of the senior arrested members, Francesco Colletti.

He reportedly told his driver about details of the Cupola meeting, describing it as 'a beautiful meeting, very serious, with country people, old people.'

Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told journalists that the Cupola meeting was identified thanks to phone taps and that the main topic at the meeting had been 'rules'.

'The need to reestablish certain rules that Cosa Nostra had lost along the way, they were applied less because of the organisation's overall disorganisation,' Lo Voi said.

'We deduced that it was a Cupola meeting because important Cosa Nostra members... were not allowed to take part,' he said.

'These people, despite being heads of families, were kept outside because only regional bosses could take part.'

It is not known where the Cupola meeting took place, but Colletti's conversation with his driver implicated Mineo and others.

Colletti reportedly rejoiced in the resurrected Cupola, which was to be an improvement on Riina's 'tyranny'.

'We all got up and kissed,' Colletti reportedly said of the end of the meeting.

Once all-powerful on Sicily, the world's most famous crime gang has been squeezed over the past two decades, with many bosses put behind bars, businesses sequestered and locals increasingly ready to defy it.

'With an extraordinary operation in the Palermo province, the police have dismantled Cosa Nostra's new 'cupola',' Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Twitter.

Mineo was sentenced to five years in jail for mafia-related crimes at the so-called 'maxi-trial' that ran from 1986-1992 and was spearheaded by prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Both Falcone and Borsellino were murdered in 1992 on Riina's orders after verdicts were delivered. Following their deaths, the state poured resources into the fight against the mob and ground down Cosa Nostra.

Mineo survived a 1992 ambush that killed his brother Giuseppe, around six months after another brother, Antonino, was murdered outside the family jewellery shop.

Italian police in March arrested 11 suspected gangsters accused of aiding and abetting senior mob fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro.

Hunted by police since 1993, Denaro, 56, was also considered to be a successor to Riina and fellow boss Bernardo Provenzano, who himself died recently in prison.

A former Cosa Nostra hitman, Denaro, nicknamed 'Diabolik', has been sentenced in absentia to life in prison for multiple murders. The only photo of him dates back to the beginning of the 1990s.

Over the past two decades Italian police have increased arrests and seizures targeting his entourage, in a bid to isolate the notorious boss.

In 2015, police discovered that Denaro had abandoned modern methods of communication and was giving orders to his men via traditional 'pizzini': small bits of paper containing encoded messages.

Italian media reported that Mineo was a preferable new Mafia leader because he was not in hiding.

'The arrests ... represent one of the biggest blows inflicted on the mafia by the state.

'Mineo had been elected "heir" of Toto Riina after his death. There is no more room for this type of scum in Italy,' Di Maio wrote on Instagram.

The suspects are accused of extortion, illegal gun possession, arson, Mafia association and other crimes, investigators said.

Police are due to release more details about their operation later in the day.

Cosa Nostra: How the 'octopus' reached into all areas of society during bloody reign of terror With Mafia king Toto Riina's death last year many speculated that it was game over for Sicily's once all-powerful Cosa Nostra. But a meeting in May of the organisation's cupola, or hierarchy, was seen by investigators as a sign the feared mobsters were looking to rebuild. 'Boss of bosses' Riina, who was nicknamed 'The Beast' because of his cruelty, led a reign of terror including the brutal daylight assassinations of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He died a year ago aged 87, just months after being caught on wiretaps in jail boasting afresh about his bloody crimes. 'Riina will go down in history as the man who destroyed Cosa Nostra,' Mafia expert Attilio Bolzoni said. 'With his strategy of bloody massacres in Sicily and across Italy... he turned an invisible Mafia visible, with hundreds, thousands of murders, carried out first with Kalashnikovs, then bombs.' Salvatore 'Toto' Riina in court during a preliminary hearing in Palermo, Sicily, Italy in 1993 'For the first time in history, the state reacted mercilessly,' Bolzoni said, with the arrest of hundreds of bosses and the introduction of harsh anti-mafia laws that saw imprisoned gangsters held in utter isolation. Caught and jailed in 1993 after nearly a quarter of a decade as a fugitive, his revenge was swift: Cosa Nostra launched a series of bombings in Rome, Milan and Florence that killed 10 people. But he was unable to stop the decimation of the crime group - once nicknamed 'the octopus' for its tentacled reach into all areas of society - which was gradually supplanted by the Camorra in Naples and 'Ndrangheta in Calabria. Multi-murderer playboy Messina Denaro, one of the world's most-wanted men, was seen last year by many as Riina's natural heir but has been on the run since 1993. And police now believe 80-year-old jeweller Settimo Mineo, arrested this morning in Palermo, was set to step into that role. Italy's high court caused outrage in 2017 when they ruled that Riina 'deserved to die with dignity' in his own home as he fought terminal cancer Last year prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio, who spent 20 years in the DDA organisation of anti-mafia prosecutors, warned the days of shootouts and car bombs may be gone, but Cosa Nostra has been growing fat instead on political deals. 'We have greatly weakened the military apparatus of the Mafia, the massacres are over, murders are rare. But the Mafia has undergone a genetic modification,' Cartosio told AFP in 2017. 'The political sector has lent itself greatly to... (organised crime's) infiltration of the social fabric' and, as a consequence, 'the Mafia presence in the political sphere is much greater than before,' he said. And the battle is not only against 'the octopus' but also the 'Stidda', a rival group formed by former Cosa Nostra members during the Second Mafia War of the early 1980s. 'The Mafia is less military, less bloody than before, but it's very efficient,' he said.</s>ROME (Reuters) - Italian police have arrested the new head of the Sicilian mafia and 45 other alleged mobsters in a powerful blow to organized crime on the Mediterranean island, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Tuesday.

The previous boss of bosses, Salvatore "Toto" Riina, died in prison last year after spending almost a quarter of century behind bars for ordering dozens of murders, including those of two of Italy's most famous anti-mob magistrates.

Police said that among those arrested on Tuesday was Settimo Mineo, head of the local mafia families in the Sicilian capital Palermo. Officials said he had recently been named the overall head of the island's mafia, known as 'Cosa Nostra' (Our Thing).

"The arrests ... represent one of the biggest blows inflicted on the mafia by the state. Mineo had been elected 'heir' of Toto Riina after his death. There is no more room for this type of scum in Italy," Di Maio wrote on Instagram.

Police are due to release more details about their operation later in the day.</s>Italian police on Tuesday arrested new Mafia boss Settimino Mineo and dozens of other suspects in a major swoop against a resurgent Cosa Nostra.

Police arrested jeweller Mineo, 80, and at least 45 others in Sicily just before he was due to be officially anointed at a reconvened Mafia Commission or Cupola, the police said.

The suspects are accused of extortion, illegal gun possession, arson, Mafia association and other crimes, investigators said.

The Sicilian Mafia managed to rebuild the Cupola after it had not met for years, Italian media reported.

The Cupola met in May for the first time since 1993 and was due to appoint Mineo official heir to notorious Mafia boss Toto Riina who died in prison last year.

Police also arrested three other Cupola members in the swoop. The four senior Mafia leaders had all recently served prison time for their activities.

Italian media reported that police obtained crucial information by tapping the phone of one of the senior arrested members, Francesco Colletti.

He reportedly told his driver about details of the May 29 Cupola meeting, describing it as "a beautiful meeting, very serious, with country people, old people."

Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told journalists that the Cupola meeting was identified thanks to phone taps and that the main topic at the meeting had been "rules".

"The need to reestablish certain rules that Cosa Nostra had lost along the way, they were applied less because of the organisation's overall disorganisation," Lo Voi said.

"We deduced that it was a Cupola meeting because important Cosa Nostra members... were not allowed to take part," he said.

"These people, despite being heads of families, were kept outside because only regional bosses could take part."

It is not known where the Cupola meeting took place, but Colletti's conversation with his driver implicated Mineo and others.

Colletti reportedly rejoiced in the resurrected Cupola, which was to be an improvement on Riina's "tyranny".

"We all got up and kissed," Colletti reportedly said of the end of the meeting.

"Forty-six arrests and one in particular, that of Settimo Mineo, represents one of the toughest blows inflicted by the State on the Mafia," said deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio.

"Mineo was indeed elected 'heir' to Toto Riina after his death. There is no longer room for this scum in Italy," Di Maio wrote on Facebook.

Lifelong Mafia member Mineo was arrested as part of investigations by judge and prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in 1984 and imprisoned for five years.

Falcone was murdered in a massive car bombing in 1992. Mineo was rearrested in 2006 and imprisoned for another 11 years.

Mineo survived a 1992 ambush that killed his brother Giuseppe, around six months after another brother, Antonino, was murdered outside the family jewellery shop.

Italian police in March arrested 11 suspected gangsters accused of aiding and abetting senior mob fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro.

Hunted by police since 1993, Denaro, 56, was also considered to be a successor to Riina and fellow boss Bernardo Provenzano, who himself died recently in prison.

A former Cosa Nostra hitman, Denaro has been sentenced in absentia to life in prison for multiple murders.

The only photo of him dates back to the beginning of the 1990s.

Over the past two decades Italian police have increased arrests and seizures targeting his entourage, in a bid to isolate the notorious boss.

In 2015, police discovered that Denaro had abandoned modern methods of communication and was giving orders to his men via traditional "pizzini": small bits of paper containing encoded messages.

Italian media reported that Mineo was a preferable new Mafia leader because he was not in hiding.</s>Palermo: Italian police have arrested the suspected new head of the Sicilian mafia and 45 other alleged mobsters in a major blow to organised crime on the Mediterranean island, the government said on Tuesday.

"There is no more room for this type of scum in Italy," Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Instagram.

The previous boss of bosses, Salvatore "Toto" Riina, died in prison last year after spending almost a quarter of a century behind bars for ordering dozens of murders, including those of two of Italy's most celebrated anti-mob prosecutors.

Among those arrested on Tuesday was Settimo Mineo, an 80-year-old jeweller suspected of heading local mafia families in the Sicilian capital Palermo and of being promoted to lead the whole crime group in May, police said.</s>(ROME) — Italian authorities said Tuesday they had dismantled the rebuilt upper echelons of the Mafia in the Sicilian capital by arresting 46 people, including the man presumed to have taken over as provincial kingpin after the death of “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina.

Based on wiretaps, police determined that Settimo Mineo was elected head of a reconstructed “cupola,” or provincial mob commission, during a May 29 meeting of clan leaders in Palermo. It was the first time clan leaders had gathered in such a forum for years, and followed Riina’s November 2017 death, prosecutors said.

Italy’s chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, said the election of Mineo, 80, was significant because it showed that the center of power of Cosa Nostra had shifted to Palermo. Under Riina, its longtime base was Corleone, the Sicilian town made famous by writer Mario Puzo when he used Corleone as the main character’s name in his 1969 novel “The Godfather.”

Police recalled that the “provincial commission” structure was created in the 1950s as the decision-making forum for Sicilian and U.S. Mafia families. During the 1980s, it became less collegial under Riina’s domination and effectively ceased to function after his 1993 arrest.

Prosecutors say Mineo effectively tried to resurrect the structure in the province of Palermo and return to the rules governing territory and communication that had previously dictated dealings among mob clans.

Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said Mineo had already served a lengthy prison sentence for Mafia association and other crimes after he was swept up in the maxi-trials against the Sicilian Mafia in the 1980s and ’90s. As the eldest of the local clan leaders, he enjoyed particular respect, he said.

“This is a sign that Cosa Nostra doesn’t abandon its rules,” Lo Voi told a press conference. “And that despite the convictions, despite the trials, important people can take over the most important roles once they’re back in play.”

Those arrested are suspected of mafia association, extortion, weapons violations and other charges, police said.

After Riina’s 1993 arrest, the Sicilian Mafia saw a degree of marginalization compared with the Calabrian-based ‘ndrangheta organized crime syndicate or the Neapolitan Camorra. But Italian officials said it nevertheless continued increasing its financial and business activities, and even started doing deals with the other southern syndicates.

“This is what emerges from the other investigations, that apparently facing this kind of situation, Palermo could not stay behind and not share with all the bosses what was to be the plan,” Cafiero De Raho said.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini called the sweep in Palermo an “extraordinary operation.” Salvini said in a tweet that it had “dismantled the new ‘cupola’ of Cosa Nostra.”</s>Police arrested dozens of suspected mobsters in Europe and South America on Wednesday in a huge international swoop targeting Italy’s notorious ’Ndrangheta mafia clan, officials said.

More than 80 people, including high-ranking members of the powerful organised crime syndicate, accused of drug trafficking and money laundering, were arrested in coordinated raids in six countries, EU justice agency Eurojust said.

The “unprecedented” crackdown on the group based in Calabria, southern Italy, came just a day after Italian police arrested the new boss of the separate Sicilian mafia.

Hundreds of police took part in Wednesday’s operation, seizing four tonnes of cocaine, 120 kilos of ecstasy and two million euros (dollars) in cash across Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Suriname.

“Today, we send a clear message to organised crime groups across Europe,” Filippo Spiezia, vice-president of the EU’s judicial agency Eurojust, told reporters in The Hague. “They are not the only ones able to operate across borders; so are Europe’s judiciary and law enforcement communities.”

He said the “unprecedented and extraordinary result”, the fruit of a two-year operation, targeted “dangerous members of the ‘Ndrangheta family deeply involved in drug trafficking and money laundering”.

The ’Ndrangheta — which derives its meaning from the Greek word for heroism — is made up of numerous village and family-based clans in Calabria, the rural, mountainous and under-developed “toe” of Italy’s boot.

Despite intense police attention and frequent arrests, the organisation has continued to extend its reach.

It has surpassed Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the Naples-based Camorra in influence thanks to control of the cocaine trade and is the sole mafia organisation to operate on all continents, according to anti-mafia prosecutors.

Officials hailed Wednesday’s operation — dubbed “Operation Pollina” — as a serious blow to the group.

In total, 41 people were arrested in Italy, 21 in Germany, 14 in Belgium, five in the Netherlands and two in Luxembourg, with operations still underway, Eurojust said.

Italian police said the sweep targeted the ’Ndrangheta and its “projections across South America”.

Italian anti-mafia prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho said the operations would affect the ‘Ndrangheta’s drug trafficking operations around the world, including Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil.

But he warned that it was “just a first step”, saying the arrests were “nothing for the ’Ndrangheta, there are thousands of people who should be arrested and billions that should be seized”.

In Germany, Wednesday’s operation focused on restaurants, offices and apartments, mainly in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria region.

Dutch prosecutors said the investigation began after they noticed money laundering at two Italian restaurants in the southern Netherlands that showed criminal links with Germany and Calabria, home of the ’Ndrangheta.

Using an often family-based network spread out around Europe, drugs would come into the Dutch port of Rotterdam and the Belgian port of Antwerp before being moved around the continent.

Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said they had also probed ice cream parlours, adding that together with restaurants “the suspicion is that the mafia organisation is laundering money through these establishments and they are used as a cover for their criminal organisations”.

He also confirmed that there had been raids in Suriname, a small South American country that was once a Dutch colony. Dutch NOS television said the ’Ndrangheta were mainly active in the Netherlands in drug smuggling through the country’s huge flower export market.

The Belgian operations were concentrated on the Limburg area, home to many people of Italian descent who moved there after World War II to work in coal mines, Belgian prosecutors said. The European police agency Europol said it was a “decisive hit against one of the most powerful Italian criminal networks in the world”.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, who is Italian, sent “congratulations” to the police forces involved, adding: “Europe fights ‘Ndrangheta criminal groups”. On Tuesday, Italian police arrested new Cosa Nostra boss Settimino Mineo and dozens of other suspects in Sicily in a major swoop.

Jeweller Mineo, 80, was detained with at least 45 others just before he was due to be appointed official heir to notorious mafia boss Toto Riina, who died in prison last year.</s>Italian police arrest mafia's alleged new mob boss and 45 others in crackdown on organised crime

Italian police have arrested the suspected new head of the Sicilian mafia and 45 other alleged mobsters in a major blow to organised crime on the Mediterranean island, the Government said.

"There is no more room for this type of scum in Italy," Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Instagram.

The previous boss of bosses, Salvatore "Toto" Riina, died in prison last year after spending almost a quarter of a century behind bars for ordering dozens of murders, including those of two of Italy's most celebrated anti-mob prosecutors.

Among those arrested was Settimo Mineo, an 80-year-old jeweller suspected of heading local mafia families in the Sicilian capital Palermo and of being promoted to lead the whole crime group in May, police said.

"The arrests … represent one of the biggest blows inflicted on the mafia by the state. Mineo had been elected 'heir' of Toto Riina after his death," Mr Di Maio added.

A police source said Mr Mineo was elected boss at a meeting of provincial leaders of the Sicilian mafia, known as the Cosa Nostra, on May 29.

It was believed to be the first such gathering of mob families for more than 25 years.

Once all-powerful in Sicily, the world's most famous crime gang has been squeezed over the past two decades, with many bosses put behind bars, businesses sequestered and locals increasingly ready to defy it.

The meeting in May of the Cosa Nostra cupola, or hierarchy, was seen by investigators as a sign the group was looking to rebuild.

"With an extraordinary operation in the Palermo province, the police have dismantled Cosa Nostra's new cupola," Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Twitter.

Mineo was sentenced to five years in jail for mafia-related crimes at the so-called "maxi-trial" that ran from 1986 to 1992 and was spearheaded by prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Both Mr Falcone and Mr Borsellino were murdered in 1992 on Riina's orders after verdicts were delivered.

Following their deaths, the state poured resources into the fight against the mob.
The alleged boss of the Cosa Nostra mafia clan is arrested along with 45 suspected accomplices in the province of Palermo, Italy. They are accused of aggravated extortion.