Fears of new mafia bloodbath as son of Italian family dubbed The Barbarians is ‘found dead in a burned out SUV’… with last feud sparking DECADES of tit-for-tat assassinations including a wife shot dead on Christmas Day

The crime syndicate has its origins in Calabria, the impoverished southern region at the toe of Italy’s boot. The name is believed to come from the ancient Greek words andros and agathos, meaning brave or brave man.

They expanded substantially starting in the 1970s. During this time, one of their main activities was carrying out kidnappings and reinvesting ransom money in public works projects and drug trafficking, especially cocaine.

The ‘Ndrangheta kidnapped dozens of high-profile victims, including celebrities such as John Paul Getty III, heir to an American oil family. He was kidnapped from the streets of Rome in 1973 and held prisoner for five months in the mountains of Calabria.

The syndicate cut off Getty’s right ear in a desperate attempt to get his family to pay the £2.1 million ransom. Her heartbreaking story was later told in Ridley Scott’s film All the Money in the World and Danny Boyle’s television series Trust.

The Italian research group Eurispes valued the ‘Ndrangheta’s annual turnover in 2008 at a staggering €44bn (£38.32bn), around 3 per cent of Italy’s gross domestic product at the time. . They have reportedly expanded to over 40 countries worldwide and continue to grow at a steady pace.

The syndicate is alleged to play a role as a major cocaine smuggler from Latin America to Europe. He is also believed to make money from illegal waste trafficking, blackmail and usury, offering credit to struggling companies and then gradually taking control of them.

Millions of euros are spent in an effort to dismantle the numerous global networks of the notorious ‘Ndrangheta mafia. Recent operations against the syndicate include the pan-European operation Eureka. This led to a raid in early May in which more than 100 arrests were made and gangsters were alleged to be using Chinese money brokers.

In 2021, Italian authorities made internal progress against the ‘Ndrangheta, arresting more than 320 suspected gangsters and associates and sentencing 70 of them to terms of up to 20 years.

The union is no stranger to violence. They made headlines in 2007, when six men were gunned down outside a pizzeria in the western city of Duisburg, Germany, as part of a long-running war between rival mafia clans.

The famous San Luca feud between the Pelle-Vottari and Nirta-Strangio families began with a carnival prank in 1991 that led to a series of murders, including the execution, on Christmas Day 2006, of the wife of a mobster from the Strangio family. Notorious mobster Santo Vottari was sentenced in 2017 to 10 years in prison, two years after going on the run for the murders.

The ‘Ndrangheta was also held responsible for the murder of Italian mother Maria Chindamo. The mother of three disappeared from her farm in Calabria, southern Italy, in May 2016 after rejecting mafia offers to buy her land. It was later learned that a ‘Ndrangheta gangster murdered her and her body was fed to pigs.