'Cocaine King of Milan' arrested in Brazil

A young Rocco Morabito, left, and after his most recent arrest

  JOAO PESSOA - The ‘ndrangheta boss Rocco Morabito has been arrested in a hotel in Joao Pessoa, the capital of the state of Paraiba in Brazil. He is the second most wanted man in Italy - after Matteo Messina Denaro, aka Diabolik - and considered one of the most important drug traffickers in South America.

  His capture on Monday was carried out by the Carabinieri’s Special Operations Group (ROS) and regional commands of Turin and Reggio Calabria, in conjunction with Interpol, the Brazilian Federal Police and the FBI. Also captured in the same operation was Vincenzo Pasquino, 35, from Piedmont, one of Italy’s most wanted.

  On June 24, 2019, Morabito broke out from prison in Montevideo, Uruguay, along with three other inmates, Leonardo Abel Sinopoli Azcoaga, Matias Sebastián Acosta González and Bruno Ezequiel Díaz, escaping through a hole in the roof of the prison. He was about to be extradited back to Italy, where a sentence of 30 years is awaiting him, for mafia association and drug trafficking. 

 Morabito was a boss of one of the most powerful ‘ndrangheta clans in Locri, Calabria, and had been on the run from 1994 to 2017, hiding in Uruguay under the fake name Francisco Antonio Capeletto Souza. He was captured in September 2017, but escaped less than two years later.

  Before his arrest, he had been living the good life in Uruguay, in a villa with a pool in the resort town of Punta del Este, 13 mobile phones, 12 credit cards and a Brazilian passport.

  He was also known by the name Tamunga, supposedly because as a young man he would drive along the beaches of Locri in the military off-road vehicle, “Auto Munga”.

  In his heyday in the 1980s and 90s he was known as the ‘Cocaine King of Milan’, exporting hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Brazil every year. He had a criminal heritage, being related to ‘ndrangheta boss Giuseppe Morabito, known as ‘u tiradrittu, and while working as his uncle Domenico Antonio Mollica’s right hand man in Milan he became known as one of a group of young, stylish and party-loving mafiosi.