Rocco Morabito, who is said to be the boss of an organized crime gang in Italy and was wanted for drug trafficking, but escaped arrest after escaping from a Uruguayan prison almost two years ago, in June 2019was arrested Monday in the northeastern Brazilian city of Zhoua Pesoa, authorities said.
Rocco Morabito, Allegedly the leader of Drangheta – the Calabrian mafia – arrested “along with another fugitive Italian”, whose identity has not been made public, following a “joint investigation” by the Brazilian and Italian authorities, the Brazilian federal police said in a press release.
Rocco Morabito is the second most wanted criminal in Italy, federal police explained.
“There are traces of Rocco Morabito in the organization of drug trafficking between Brazil and Europe since the 1990s,” according to the Brazilian Federal Police, which announced today that it would hold a press conference today to detail the operation.
Brazilian federal Supreme Court orders 54-year-old arrested under a red notice from Interpol, which states that from 1988 to 1994 he belonged to a criminal organization engaged in drug trafficking internationally.
Among other things, he is accused of smuggling drugs to Italy and selling them in Milan and of trying to import 592 kilograms of cocaine from Brazil in 1992 and 630 kilograms of cocaine in 1993.
Rocco Morabito has been wanted by Italian police since 1995, as he is accused of forming and gang and drug trafficking, while he has been sentenced in absentia to serve a sentence of 28 years, a sentence that later became even heavier, reaching 30 years.
The Italian, who was among the ten most wanted criminals in the world, was arrested in September 2017 at a hotel in Montevideo, after staying for 13 years under a false identity in the expensive resort of Punta del Este, 140 km from the capital.
He had secured papers from the Uruguayan authorities in 2004, presenting a Brazilian passport with the name Francisco Capelleto. But his identity was revealed when he enrolled his daughter in school with her real name.
Uruguayan justice approved his extradition to Italy in 2018, but, in June 2019, he managed to escape from the central prison of Montevideo and has remained a fugitive ever since.
Rocco Morabito had managed to escape an operation by the authorities to arrest him in 1994 in Milan, where had acquired the nickname “the king of cocaine”. Hailing from Africa, a village in Calabria, he was one of the main members of the “African Nuovo” faction.
According to some analysts, Drangeta in recent years has surpassed Cosa Nostra, in other words it has now become the most powerful mafia organization in Italy and one of the most powerful in the world.
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