Police on Tuesday in Rome arrested 16 suspected members of a loan-sharking and money-laundering gang who extorted annual interest rates of up to 150 percent from its victims.
The alleged gang's victims included politicians and shop keepers, and local officials, who it threatened and intimidated, police said.
The arrests were made on the orders of Rome's anti-mafia directorate and followed an investigation launched in 2012 that uncovered the gang allegedly run by prominent underworld figures in the Italian capital.
The gang's bosses include Benedetto Stranieri, who was arrested last year for mafia association on the orders of prosecutors in the Calabrian city of Catanzaro, investigators said.
A former Carabinieri paramilitary police officer, he later became a lawyer for Calabrian mafia boss Nicolino Grande Aracri, according to investigators.
