Spanish police arrest gang leader with links to Italy's Camorra on suspicion of drug trafficking

The detainee, whose identity has not been disclosed, is accused of belonging to a criminal organisation and drug trafficking in the Marano area of Naples.

Spain's national police have arrested the alleged leader of an Italian criminal organisation in the city of Girona in the northern Catalonia region.The man, who has not been named, was subject to three European arrest warrants for membership of a criminal organisation and drug trafficking "on a large scale."The arrested man is said to be the leader of the Orlando-Polverino-Nuvoletta clan, which has links to the criminal organistion Camorra and which largely operates in the southern Italian region of Marano.The investigation in Spain dates back to February, when authorities learned that the accused, who had been on the run since August 2024, could be in Spain "carrying out his activities related to the trafficking of narcotic substances," a police statement said.According to police, "the fugitive" used various means to avoid being location by law enforcment, including "the use of various mobile devices with telephone lines in Lithuania and the United Kingdom, false documentation for him and his partner, and the rental of holiday homes in different areas," in both Barcelona and in Girona, "where he only spent a few days and then immediately changed his place of residence."The investigation found that the man had built up a "network of contacts" in Barcelona, where family and friends "were in charge of maintaining the logistics of transport and distribution of the drugs, as well as vehicles and homes."Authorities deployed a range of surveillance devices, with "lines of investigation focused mainly on the fugitive's close environment."To close the investigation, agents focused on one of the homes where he used to hide, in a residential area in Girona, where "after several days of surveillance" three people were seen leaving the property."They entered a vehicle driven by a man, at which point the agents began a discreet pursuit until they intercepted the vehicle in which two men and a woman were travelling, one of them being the fugitive on the run from the Italian authorities," the police statement said.An Italian clan with links to SpainIn 2018, Spanish police arrested Antonio Orlando, one of the heads of the criminal gang made up of the three most powerful clans in Naples and who had managed to evade justice for 15 years, despite being considered one of the most dangerous criminals in Italy.By then, the clan had already suffered numerous arrests, many of which happened in Spain, as they were involved in laundering millions of euros from drug trafficking in the Canary Islands.Then Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, celebrated his arrest by assuring that "the good life is over" for the crim.