A note from Rome’s Anti-Mafia Directorate, published Tuesday on the website of the newspaper La Notizie, explains that Carabinieri officers participated in this operation, nicknamed “Anemone,” and led to the arrest of 28 people.

The investigation revealed large-scale drug trafficking, with more than a ton of cocaine as well as approximately 1,500 kilograms of hashish transported from South America to Italy in containers through ports in Spain and the Netherlands, from where they arrived at Gioia Tauro, in Calabria, for onward transfer to Rome.

The drug traffickers used sophisticated cryptographic systems for their communications, provided by an operations center located in Rome.

Europol, Eurojust, Interpol (I-CAN project), as well as the International Police Cooperation Service and the Central Directorate for Anti-Drug Services (DCSA), participated in the operation, given the transnational dimension of this network, the source adds.

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