Australia’s cocaine price doubles since Operation Ironside as accused mafia kingpin exposed
Australia’s wholesale cocaine price has doubled since Operation Ironside, and the accused kingpin of the world’s biggest mafia clan has come undone. NEW PODCAST
The Mafia's Web
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Australia’s wholesale cocaine price has doubled since the mafia-smashing Operation Ironside and coronavirus travel restrictions interrupted drug routes across the world.
The sting of the century, which intercepted more than 27 million messages on the AN0M trojan horse app used by criminals, has had a significant impact on illicit drug prices.
The details has emerged in the new Mafia’s Web podcast, which examines the Australian-based Italian organised crime group.
Operation Ironside was revealed in June, with hundreds of criminals arrested across the nation in co-ordinated raids involving more than 4000 Australian Federal Police officers.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Todd Hunter told the Mafia’s Web podcast that it had caused a spike in wholesale drug prices.
“We’ve seen the process for cocaine increase dramatically ranging from $250,000 to $320,000 a kilo,” Acting Asst Comm Hunter said.
He said before the Operation Ironside raids, batches previously went for between $100,000 to $150,000 on the wholesale market.
“But certainly not in the $300,000s before. We have seen prices jump during the pandemic and after things like our major Operation Ironside. We’ve seen prices double.”
It comes as the podcast also revealed how the mafia was under pressure in Italy, where 355 mob bosses from the notorious Ndrangheta clan were now on trial in the biggest case there for decades.
Luigi Mancuso has been accused of being the kingpin in a large-scale cocaine syndicate set up by the Ndrangheta – the world’s biggest mafia clan – that has deep links in Australia.
The podcast reveals how he went from relative anonymity to become the poster boy of crime.
Dr Anna Sergi, a mafia expert from the University of Essex who has studied the group’s influence in Australia, grew up in the same small village as Mancuso but did not turn to a life of crime.
“Luigi has all the characteristics of a mafia boss, a very good one, as in one of the kind that fills the pages of mafia books,” Dr Sergi said.
Listen to Ep 1 of The Mafia’s Web here:
“He’s been the boss for years. And he wasn’t even 40 by then and his family had been in the ring for less than 10 years so he has made a very quick career and most of it is based allegedly on drugs.”
The Ndrangheta, a group based out of Calabria in southern Italy, has overtaken Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the Camorra, based in Naples in the north of the country as the most prolific crime group.
Their power has come from strong links to South American cocaine groups, using ports in Italy to ship the drug out across the world, including to Australia’s lucrative cocaine market.
The mafia built its strength by recruiting family members and enforcing a code of silence.
But that has been breaking, with Luigi Mancuso’s nephew Emanuele becoming the key witness in the trial in Italy.
“He made a choice a few years back, pretty much in his mid 30s and he’s decided that to save his family’s future he needs to break away from the family itself. His testimony is a key testimony,” Dr Sergi said.
However, that decision has come at a cost, with Emanuele’s wife holding his daughter as a hostage because he had turned against the mafia.
He has a $1.5 million price on his head and his wife has refused to let him see his child.
Influential Italian prosecutor Nicola Gratteri has led the investigation, with a brief of evidence that stretches beyond 20,000 pages.
Those accused in the court documents also include police and local politicians allegedly in the pockets of the mafia.
Luigi Mancuso, 66, had spent almost 20 years in jail over crimes linked to the mafia but managed to keep control of his empire.
He extended his influence through the Masonic lodge societies across Italy, according to wire tapped conversations.
The trial in Italy will take up to two years, with more than 900 witnesses expected to give evidence.
Originally published as Australia’s cocaine price doubles since Operation Ironside as accused mafia kingpin exposed
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