For Milan daily Corriere della Sera, It was “the second most wanted man by Italian justice”, the top rung of the podium held by Matteo Messina Denaro, the famous “dandy” of the Sicilian mafia, has disappeared since the early 1990s.

On the night of July 6 at 2:45 am, Rocco Morabito, one of the historical leaders of the ‘Ndrangheta Calabrian mafia, landed in Rome. Thus ends his extradition process, which began when he was arrested in Brazil in May 2021, following his escape from Uruguayan prison, the country where he hid under an assumed name and where he was first arrested, in 2017.

The 55-year-old has already been sentenced in absentia to 30 years in prison for international drug trafficking, roughly equivalent to the years he spent on the run, as the Transalpine police have been looking for Morabito since 1994.

Before leaving the peninsula in the direction of South America, from where he coordinated his movements, he was very active in Milan, as a symbol of the expansion of the ‘Ndrangheta, a mafia that was expanding more and more, first to the north. Italy, and then internationally, until today it is considered the most powerful criminal organization in the country (and probably in Europe).

In some ways, the symbol of this internationalization was Morabito, summarizes mafia expert Roberto Saviano in a video about the character filmed for Corriere della Sera :

“If today I had to make a list of Italian companies with significant international influence, I would put the ‘Ndrangheta in first place. And in this process of “international development” Rocco Morabito certainly played a decisive role.”