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- [00:00]
A
This is Australian True Crime International with Michelle Laurie. In 2006, Dutch woman Sanne Deboer had a small financial windfall and became one of those people we read about who bought an incredibly cheap rundown house in a picturesque village in Italy's Calabria region. She was aware of the region's reputation as a mafia stronghold, but found it hard to believe her sweet neighbours could be involved in anything like that. Eventually, though, Sanne began to realise that the very fabric of everyday life in her vill controlled by a strict code enforced by the Drangheta, one of the most powerful crime organisations in the world. Sunny has written a book about her observations and experiences. It's called the New Mafia, and she joins us to talk about it. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
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I was invited by an author to help them write their book. So I was working there, actually, as an editor. I had never been in the south of Italy. I was immediately I fell in love with the natural beauty of the place. I was living on this beautiful hilltop village by the sea. The people in the village was super welcoming to me and of course, it took a while also for me to kind of get to understand a little bit more about the local mafia clans, because it's understandable that people wouldn't be very ready to speak about it with me. Also, another factor was my Italian was still very basic, so I. It took me quite some years to. To, you know, to be able to read the pa, to be able to eventually start reporting on the subject and to go and speak to all kinds of people about it.
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A
I've been telling people about the book and the story I always relay to them is one night you heard a car explosion and everyone went out on the street and you realized that it belonged to a lady who worked at the council who gave out building permits and eventually you realized she mustn't have given a permit to someone who wanted one. But significantly, the police never came, the fire brigade never came.
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B
She never even called them.
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A
Right.
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B
It was in the middle of the night. It was such a shocking event. Everybody came out of their houses. Everybody was also very supportive of that family that was obviously heartbroken and shocked and very much afraid of what this would mean. But it was very significant that I realized nobody was calling the police. She never filed a police report. Everybody helps to put out the fire. And eventually she. She quit her job and she moved away, sadly enough as well. So.
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A
So it's a very telling moment that everybody else understands what's happening. The Drangida also has quite a presence here in Australia and has done for a very long time, and as does in Holland, it does all over Europe, America, and I think responsible for most of the cocaine movement around the world. Is that fair?
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B
That is what Italian law enforcement has said for many years. Early 2000s, up until maybe 10 years ago, they were definitely a very large factor in the cocaine smuggling all over the world.
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A
And ecstasy was our. I'm sure you've read about that at the time was the biggest ecstasy hall in the world. That happened here in Melbourne.
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B
A couple of probably Australian Dutch connection as well there, because it's in Holland, it's in southern Holland and Belgium that most of the world's ecstasy is produced. So it was very probably produced. Produced in the Netherlands, then brought to Italy and transported to Australia and put in cans.
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Remember, put in cans that look like tomato. Crushed tomatoes.
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Tomato cans. Yes.
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Amazing. Yeah.
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50 million ecstasy pills.
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A
An amazing story. So is that their main industry, still drugs, narcotics?
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B
Yes, I believe it's their largest in the state. Part of their income. They do, of course, also make a lot of money from just public contracts and some extortion. Not always extortion, as in asking for protection money directly, but often also forcing people to buy products that are too. That are really highly priced, because we
- [04:43]
A
know that's the formula, right, that's the mafia formula, is to open legitimate businesses for many reasons, to gain control of other sectors of the economy, legitimate sectors. So all those things go on in all of the countries that they're. That they're in.
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B
Yeah, yeah, definitely in our country is a lot of investments in hospitality sector, but it could be anything. And I believe also in Australia, there's, of course, the construction sector, the agriculture. Many, many areas.
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A
Are there other criminal groups encroaching on this, on these industries? In Australia at the moment, we have Middle Eastern gangs, I think, are really running the joint these days. And so I wonder if they. Do you think they. Do they work together? Do they. Do they end up fighting over things?
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B
What we've seen in investigations usually is that Ndrangheta clans collaborate with other more violent criminal groups in all these territories. So that what they actually do is that they come away with. They get away with it, basically, because the more violent criminal groups get targeted by law enforcement and they. Yes, and that's what was brought to Light by Operation Ironside in Australia. And was it 2022 that the motorcycle, the outlaw motorcycle gangs were actually collaborating with the Drengheta in the drug smuggling?
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A
You're reminding me of something someone told me recently was that the Drengeta these days are almost work as consultants, almost sort of at the very highest level of putting people together, but not getting their hands dirty.
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B
Prime as a service, they call it this, I believe. Yeah, yeah. So it's when these criminal groups get a chance to sort of evolve and this is what happens. Their exploitation is not just of regular citizens, but it's also of other crime groups.
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A
Yeah, it's very corporate almost, isn't it?
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B
Absolutely.
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A
What, though, is the difference I learnt from your book, the difference between the Drangheta and the Cosa Nostra? Arguably, the Cosa Nostra is the kind of Mafia we're more familiar with. Because that's the one the movies are made about.
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B
Exactly. I think this is probably true for all over the world. Definitely. Here in Europe we are aware of the Italian Mafia, for us is something of a little bit of the past. We think of the American movies that are made about it. So that's even the American Cosa Nostra, you could say, quite a romantic kind of image. And also, yeah, I would say at least an Italian problem or a problem that is a little bit of the past. And the main difference is that that's only around that time is exactly the Dangata, like in the 90s, what they also became known for was their horrible bomb attacks and killings of many state figures. That had a great impact on Italy, of course, and that created a reaction of the state. They became law enforcement, really targeted the Sicilian clans and the Djangote took advantage of that. And they had been clever enough to stay under the radar to not really engage openly in such killings. And they took over the cocaine business basically from the Sicilian clans and were very smart about keeping a lower profile. They became very big in the cocaine smuggling into Europe. The Netherlands was a big part of that. We have a lot of ports that allow this cocaine, have allowed the cocaine to enter, in a sense, into Europe. So that was their success story, in a sense. Yeah.
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A
So the Cosa Nostra is out of Sicily and the Drangheta is out of Calabria. It feels. I felt, I got the impression from reading your book of the Cosa Nostra being kind of quite flashy and flamboyant and, you know, police, law enforcement often talk about, in Australia and in the States about local members being quite obsessed with Those movies about, you know, in the 90s when they'd raid a house, there would be all the videos and DVDs of the Godfather movies and the Scarfaces and all the gangster and the Sopranos. But it's. So I walked away from mafia thinking, I think the Trangetta's more serious just in just as a way of saying they're just kind of, they're just really more serious, which is hard to imagine.
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B
Yeah, I could, you could say more serious, more. They're very strategic in that sense. They really found out the sneakiest way to be, I guess, to be a mafia.
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A
But they're more serious with their rules too, aren't they? Like you, you absolutely need to be Calabrian to be a member. You need to be from a family that known.
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B
There's a lot of rules, there's a lot of strict rules. They're especially cruel to their members. A lot of the membership, well, the membership in principle is passed on from father to son. So it's all these men in families. Then you can. There are arranged marriages between women in the clans with other clans that they might want to collaborate with or they might have to sort of have a peace offering with after a feud. So it's a very family based, which helps them, of course, to keep all the criminal information safe and sound within the family walls.
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A
Cause you make the point, you make the point too that then if somebody is arrested for a crime, not only do they, you know, are we hoping that they'll be loyal to the Drangheta, to the larger organization, but they, they have to be thinking about loyalty to their family, to their father, to their uncle, to their grandfather, to their lineage, to. So these strong, strong family ties are important for that reason.
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B
Right?
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For loyalty.
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They're very important. And this is also the reason why for a long time there were hardly any state witnesses who were former members and turned to speak to the police. Because there is an actual rule in the dangata that tells people to, if they do such a thing, they will be killed by their nearest family members.
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A
Oh, that's right.
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By their father or their brother. It's such a suffocating cruelty. These rules are so extremely cruel and extremely binding in that sense that it's quite understandable for somebody to be born in such a family to almost feel that there's no way out. I hope that the message of the book, definitely not to stigmatize Calabrian people, definitely not to also believe that all we have to do is now put all these criminals behind bars. Because that's already happening, most part in Italy, and it's not resolving the problem. I mean, there's less people being killed in Italy, there's a lot of people in jail, but when they come out, they just go back again because that's what is expected of them. So really, what we need to do is to. And I think I will focus more about that in my. In newer work is trying to find a more of a holistic approach to resolving these issues.
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If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.
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The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.