Police in Sicily on Thursday arrested 15 people in an operation that targeted mafia clans in and around the port city of Catania.
The suspects are accused of mafia association, extortion, money laundering, robbery, kidnapping, drugs pushing and possession, damage to property and arson, police said.
Thursday's arrests followed a probe by anti-mafia prosecutors in Catania that uncovered the clans' extensive grip on the local economy and their control of the cocaine and marijuana pushing in the area as well as their extortion rackets against local businesses, police said.
The clans targeted local hauliers and organised their kidnappings, according to investigators.
The probe centred on the so-called 'Belpasso' group of clans, which acted in the province of Catania on behalf of the Santapaola-Ercolano crime family led by convicted murderer Carmelo Aldo Navarria, investigators said.
Navarria was freed from jail in 2014 after serving a 26-year sentence for six murders. During the 1980s, his crimes included getting rid of the corpses of victims of the deadly Malpassotu clan, earning Navarria the nickname of 'the dustman'.
