Cpr - Repatriation detention centers

Islands. Spaces of education and civil disobedience

Cpr - Repatriation detention centers

Islands. Spaces of education and civil disobedience

Hydra, first convictions in the trial against the alliance between Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta and Camorra in Lombardy

Gup Emanuele Mancini sentenced 62 of the 80 defendants to an abbreviated trial. Mafia association recognized against 24 people. Eleven acquittals and 45 indictments. The investigation by the DDA of Milan and the Carabinieri had revealed the existence of a "Lombard mafia system" that shared the illicit business among itself

Andrea Giambartolomei Editor of lavialibera

Updated on January 13, 2026

Update of 12 January 2026: The first convictions have arrived for Operation Hydra, the major investigation by the Milan Anti-Mafia District Directorate into the "Lombard mafia system", the criminal organization made up of exponents of the 'Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra and Camorra to divide up business and control of the territory, exists.

The judge for the preliminary hearings of the Court of Milan, Emanuele Mancini, sentenced 62 of the 80 defendants who had chosen to be tried with the abbreviated procedure, which gives the right to a discount of one third of the sentence, and acquitted 18 people. The defendants were accused in various capacities of mafia-style criminal association, extortion, drug trafficking and dealing, attempted robbery, illegal possession of weapons, fictitious registration of assets, tax fraud and failure to pay taxes, money laundering and false invoices. The charge of mafia association was recognized against all 24 accused. The highest sentence, 16 years, was inflicted on Massimo Rosi, considered a top exponent of the 'ndrangheta and regent of the 'ndrangheta local of Legnano-Lonate Pozzolo.

The preliminary hearing judge's decision came after six hours of deliberation. Eleven people who did not request alternative rites and were acquitted at the preliminary hearing. Nine plea agreements were reached and 45 defendants were sent to trial. The device, which has not yet been made available to the lawyers, was read late in the evening in the bunker room of the Opera prison where the Milan prosecutor, Marcello Viola, went for the sentence.

The Milan magistrate, Emanuele Mancini, "considered that we are in the presence of the operation in the Lombardy territory of an association made up of individual subjects - some of whom have already in the past been judicially traced back to the so-called historical mafias (cosa nostra, camorra, 'ndrangheta) and others in any case connected to these subjects - who have exercised their capacity to intimidate, determining conditions of subjugation and silence on the community through the use of violence and threats, managing the activity of selling narcotic substances (of the type cocaine, hashish, marijuana) and entering the local economic reality with its own companies whose activities were mainly aimed at money laundering from previous illicit acts", explained in a joint note the president of the court of Milan, Fabio Roia, and the president of the investigating judge/gup office, Ezia Maccora. In Milan - the prosecutors argued during their indictment on 11 November - there would be a "mafia context" similar to the Calabrian one, "no more and no less than Calabria".

Below is the article on the process

In Milan, in the bunker room of the Opera prison, the preliminary hearings of the Hydra trial are underway. It is an important trial, born from the investigation conducted by the Carabinieri of the Investigative Unit and coordinated by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA) of Milan into the alleged alliance of the three mafias - Cosa Nostra, Camorra and 'Ndrangheta - in Lombardy. The painting is innovative. According to the deputy prosecutors Alessandra Cerreti and Rosario Ferracane - who requested the trial of 143 people - between Milan and Varese there was "an imposing and widely structured mafia association (...) made up of members of the three different mafia organizations Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta and Camorra, having a horizontal confederation structure, within which the leaders of each of the three mafia components operate on the same level, contributing to the creation of a system Lombard mafia”.

Of all the suspects, around forty have asked the judge for the preliminary hearing (gup) Emanuele Mancini to access alternative rites (such as plea bargaining or shortened sentences, which allow the sentence to be discounted by a third). Last June 18, the preliminary hearing judge accepted the incorporation as civil parties in the trial of some local authorities (the Municipality of Milan, Varese and Legnano, the Lombardy Region, the Metropolitan City of Milan), of Libera and WikiMafia, but also of the Report journalist Giorgio Mottola, threatened by one of the main suspects, and by Rai, who will be able to ask for compensation. The Report reporter and another private citizen are the only two people of the 13 identified as offended people, recipients of threats and attacks, who have decided to take sides in the trial.

"Here the mafias do business together." Interview with prosecutor Alessandra Dolci

The "Lombard mafia system"

In this new partnership, the alleged members of the three historic Italian mafia organizations were not in rivalry with each other, but allies, with a "horizontal confederation structure", with the leaders placed "at the same level", as the prosecutors claim. Part of it are - again according to investigative hypotheses - men linked to Cosa Nostra, such as the Fidanzati family, originally from Palermo but permanently settled in Milan for decades; men of the Rinzivillo family, based in Busto Arsizio and surrounding areas; of the Maffei group, originally from Catania; and Trapani mafiosi, connected to the Castelvetrano district (led by Matteo Messina Denaro). Among the latter, the name of Paolo Aurelio Errante Parrino stands out, convicted several times for mafia association and cousin-in-law of Matteo Messina Denaro.

Then there are men from the 'Ndrangheta belonging to the Legano-Lonate Pozzolo local connected to the Cirò (Crotone) local, dominated by the Farao-Marincola gang; men from the Iamonte gang linked to the Desio club and connected to the Melito Porto Salvo club (Reggio Calabria) and a man - Antonio Romeo - linked to the San Luca gang and its boss, Sebastiano Romeo known as "u staccu". Representing the Camorra are men linked to the family of Michele Senese, the boss who created his fiefdom in Rome from Campania.

In Milan, the ultras on the hunt for money and blood

The summits between men of Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta and Camorra and their activities

During the investigations, the Carabinieri of Milan and Varese documented many meetings - twenty-one - between representatives of the various mafia organizations, in Dairago, Cinisello Balsamo, Abbiategrasso and surrounding areas between 2020 and 2021.

The "Lombard mafia system" was active in drug and weapons trafficking, extortion, and in the control of the territory to resolve disputes related to business, whether illicit or legal. The most relevant aspect concerns entrepreneurial and financial affairs, scams linked for example to obtaining bonuses, the opening of companies with the sole purpose of evading taxes and laundering illicit earnings. Many suspects had acquired "directly and indirectly the management and/or control of economic activities" in the logistics sector, in the construction sector, in the healthcare sector (with particular reference to supplies related to the Covid emergency, sanitization procedures, the ambulance service for transporting dialysates), and many other areas (e-commerce, catering, car rental, airport parking, diesel import). They were also interested in acquiring "public and private contracts, also through the activation of appropriately and preventively coordinated institutional channels".

During the investigation, a new one was added to the five repentants who made useful statements, Saverio Pintaudi, who was investigated as a man close to the 'Ndrangheta with roles in many companies to reinvest the money resulting from illicit activities. Since March he has been explaining to investigators how dirty money is cleaned through fictitious companies, front men, false invoices and with the complicity of Chinese "bankers", entrepreneurs with great resources and contacts for money laundering with the Chinese underground bank system.

"Flying" money to pay for drugs. The recycling of the Chinese

To demonstrate the union of this new criminal association there was the "basin", where to put money for the prisoners or the needs of the associates. The organization "mandated the payment of sums of money into the common fund, intended for the support of the prisoners of each component and claimed as compensation for the assignment and/or facilitation in the assignment of legitimate or illicit business, by virtue of the intimidating power of the entire association", because "the prisoners must be supported before anything else in this world", and the territorial origin and the relative organization does not matter.

Some alleged members of the Lombard mafia system maintained contacts with exponents of the political, institutional, entrepreneurial and banking world, "in order to obtain favours, confidential information, provision of financing, network of relationships, all capable of providing a significant contribution to keeping the organization alive, strengthening the organization and increasing its prestige".

From some interceptions carried out by the Carabinieri during the investigation, the suspicion also emerges that some members of the organization were able to influence "the free exercise of the vote": "There are all my relatives, now male and female, we are... we have a nice package of votes, because I can bring senators to Europe, my relatives - said one of the suspects, Filippo Crea -. Then we got a party, a civic list", made by his cousins ​​"all lawyers". “We are talking about people who have 4-500 (four, five hundred) votes each,” he added.

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The dilemma: supermafia or not?

A “supermafia”, a confederation or something else? Since the Hydra investigation became public, with the arrest of 11 people on October 25, 2023, prosecutors have had conflicting views.

According to the prosecutor's office, there was "a stable and lasting agreement" between the different Calabrian, Sicilian and Campania/Roman components, demonstrated by a series of elements such as "the common contribution of capital", "the provision of human resources, the establishment of companies" for a common purpose, making profit. It would be “a confederation-type system”. In other words: "While respecting the ties with the gangs of origin, this heterogeneous association enjoys its own organization, its own autonomous program, its own rules and retaliations for those who violate them, its own associates who openly demonstrate their membership and acts independently of the individual components". This is the Lombard mafia system.

The investigating judge's assessment

The investigating judge, who had to evaluate the 153 requests for arrest, provided a very different evaluation and thus rejected 142 requests, believing that there were no elements to contest the crime of mafia-style criminal association (416 bis). According to him, the investigative hypothesis of a group made up of the three mafias, "unique in judicial history" in Italy, had not been "sufficiently supported by the evidence collected" and in some episodes "mafia" did not emerge: the proceedings, "moving from the postulate that these are subjects belonging to a mafia-style confederation, wrapped up any activity, whether legal or illicit, carried out by today's suspects, in a cloak of so-called mafia that is difficult to see in its folds, if not intuitively", we read in a passage of the ordinance. Regarding some complaints, "there is a complete absence of evidence that today's suspects made use of the power of intimidation resulting from the associative bond, in order to rout the competition". Furthermore, according to the judge, no evidence of affiliation to the "Lombard mafia system" or to traditional mafias had emerged for some of the suspects: "In the majority of cases, in fact, these are subjects with no criminal record or those who have previous convictions for crimes not connected to mafia-type dynamics".

In essence, "there is no evidence, therefore, that a stable organization has been established among those under investigation to belong to the association, put in place for the purpose of carrying out a common and long-lasting criminal program, with a division of tasks among those involved, i.e. the associative bond", we read in the precautionary custody order.

Instead, "certainly what emerges is the presence in the Milanese territory of individuals who, boasting, at least some of them, qualified relationships with some individuals of certain mafia affiliation, even if ascertained in other regions, commit legitimate but also criminal activities, especially of an economic nature, in the Lombardy territory".

The appeal of the prosecutor's office

When many requests were rejected, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti immediately responded by appealing to the Court of Review (also known as the Court of Freedoms) and underlined that "the innumerable investigative elements" were "incredibly fragmented and trivialized by the judge", adding, unlike what was written by the judge, that she had "never claimed that it was a super mafia association (...) made up of the 3 Italian mafias that would have joined together in the territory (even national)” or “worldwide”: “Nor did the prosecutor ever speak of 'hegemony' on the Lombardy territory, as the judge erroneously believed, who also excluded its existence by arguing on the lack of opposition on the part of other mafia associations rooted in the territories”.

In the 1121 pages of the appeal, the DDA, led by the prosecutor Marcello Viola and the deputy Alessandra Dolci, had specified that it had "never claimed that it was a super mafia association (...) made up of the three mafias". That is, of a "federation" authorized from above. The charge on this point, the DDA wrote, is "extremely clear: these are mere 'components' of the three traditional mafia associations, operating in the Milanese territory, which structurally ally themselves with each other to increase the possibility of profit" and "avoid conflicts".

The Review decision

Almost a year later, the Court of Review "re-examined" (precisely) the precautionary measures, ordering the arrest of 41 suspects in prison and establishing that the organization should be considered as a new and unique mafia association composed of alleged affiliates of the three mafias, as if it were a consortium based on an alliance. It can be assumed, wrote the President of the Court of Milan Fabio Roia in a note, that "individual subjects, including those belonging to the so-called historical mafias, have constituted a mafia-style association, which however cannot be configured either as a confederation of mafias or as a 'supermafia', having transferred all the genetic traits of the associations to which they belong to the horizontal association".

In the reasons, the Court of Review speaks of the "immanent mafia" of the new association in Lombardy and considers "amply demonstrated that the contested association has made effective, concrete, current and perceivable use, even with violent or threatening methods, of the force of intimidation in the commission of crimes as well as in the acquisition of control and management of economic activities, which are precisely the areas of activity" that characterize "the mafia nature". The use "of the mafia method and the criminal program" never leaves "doubts about the quality of the association". On the basis of jurisprudence, "the association", with "common structures and capital" and "participated" by people "of different mafia origins", is "undoubtedly characterized in mafia terms".

The decisions of the Court of Liberties were then confirmed by the Supreme Court of Cassation.

A detail should also be added. To skip the scrutiny of the investigating judge, the Milan prosecutor's office would have liked to proceed with the arrest of 70 suspects in 2023, but the doubts of some prosecutors in the South and the request for coordination by the National Anti-Mafia Directorate caused the plans to change.

The establishment of Libera as a civil party

On 18 June, the preliminary hearing judge Emanuele Mancini accepted the request for civil action by the administrations of Milan, Varese and Legnano, the Lombardy Region and the Metropolitan City of Milan.

Free in anti-mafia trials: civil party and civic party

He also recognized this possibility to associations such as WikiMafia and Libera, assisted by the lawyer Giuseppe Rizzo. This is "an important result", in line with other similar initiatives by Libera in other trials, which gives "a signal of commitment and responsibility for the entire civil and responsible society in the face of the criminal threat that the alliance between the various mafia organizations determines on the economy and society in Lombardy".

For the organization chaired by Don Luigi Ciotti "the presence in the Hydra trial represents an important opportunity to raise the sensitivity of the young generations towards mafias and corruption, with the involvement of schools and universities during a procedure which due to its size promises to be long-lasting".