Siderno Group

The Siderno Group is a criminal association in Canada, Australia and Italy related to the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia-type organization in Calabria. The association is labelled the "Siderno Group" because its members primarily came from the town of Siderno on the Ionian coast in Calabria and migrated to Canada and Australia in the 1950s.[1][2]

The Siderno crime group operates throughout Canada, the United States, Australia and Europe and is composed of a group of families who are related by blood or marriage. Siderno is home to one of the 'Ndrangheta's biggest and most important clans, the Commisso 'ndrina, involved in the global cocaine business and money laundering.[3] According to the Siderno police force, "The criminal minds of Siderno are in Canada."

The group has moved narcotics over three continents. They had contacts in Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Peru, and had permanent representation in Colombia for drugs and in Costa Rica and Panama for money laundering. Its key man in Colombia, Roberto Pannunzi, was arrested in Medellin, Colombia in 1994. In the past, he had been in charge of heroin shipments from Turkey through Italy to the United States.[4]

  1. ^ Why Italy's scariest Mob loves Canada Archived 2013-01-04 at archive.today, National Post, November 24, 2007
  2. ^ Myths, Legends, and Affiliation Practice s in the Italian Mafioso Imagery: the Local Dimension of Power of a Global Phenomenon by Ercole Giap Parini Archived 2015-02-16 at the Wayback Machine, paper prepared for the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) at the Conference in Marburg, 2003
  3. ^ (in Italian) Gratteri & Nicaso, Fratelli di Sangue, p. 133
  4. ^ Cooperation Between Organized Crime Groups Around The World Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine, by Alison Jamieson, Jahrbuch für internationale Sicherheitspolitik 1999, December 1999 ISBN 3-8132-0599-1