22 articles
'Ndrangheta
The 'Ndrangheta is the Calabrian mafia, one of Italy's three traditional mafias. Family-based 'ndrina clans, Greek-derived contested name, dominant in Europe's cocaine trade, estimated revenue up to US$60 billion.
Albanian mafia
Albanian mafia: contested label for Albanian-speaking criminal networks from Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro active in cocaine, heroin and cannabis trafficking across Europe and Latin America, organized in fis clans.
Ba'athist Syrian Captagon industry
The Ba'athist Syrian Captagon industry was the Assad regime's state-sponsored captagon (fenethylline) production and trafficking apparatus, supplying about 80 percent of Middle East seizures and billions of dollars in revenue until the regime's fall in December 2024.
Brabant killers
Brabant killers (Bende van Nijvel, Tueurs du Brabant): unidentified Belgian gang behind 1982–1985 supermarket robberies and murders, 28 dead, about 40 injured; case closed unsolved in June 2024.
British firms (organised crime)
British firms are self-organized football supporter groups, such as West Ham's Inter City Firm and Leeds' Service Crew, that arranged match-day violence; some provided opportunity structures for organized crime, declining since the 1990s.
Camorra
The Camorra is a Neapolitan mafia-type criminal organization based in Naples and Campania, made up of autonomous clans rather than a single hierarchy, dating to the early 19th century.
Capo dei capi
Capo dei capi ("boss of bosses") is an informal Mafia title for the supreme leader, used for Riina and Provenzano in Sicily and held by Morello through Maranzano in the American Mafia until 1931.
Clerkenwell crime syndicate
The Clerkenwell crime syndicate, also called the Adams Family or A-Team, is an alleged London organised crime group based in Islington and Clerkenwell, led by brothers Terry, Patsy and Tommy Adams, active from the 1980s in extortion, armed robbery, drug trafficking, and money laundering.
French Connection
The French Connection, also called La French, was a Corsican-run heroin trafficking network based in Marseille that supplied the United States until the early 1970s.
Greek mafia (Ελληνική μαφία)
Greek mafia (Ελληνική μαφία) is the media term for Greece's domestic organized crime groups: drug trafficking, extortion, fuel and tobacco smuggling, and over 20 contract killings since 2017, including the 2025 murder of Giorgos Moschouris.
Hutch–Kinahan feud
The Hutch–Kinahan feud is a violent conflict between two Dublin-based crime gangs that began with the murder of Gary Hutch in Spain in 2015, leaving 18 dead.
Jack McVitie
Jack "the Hat" McVitie (Jack Dennis McVitie, 1932-1967) was a London enforcer in the Kray twins' firm, murdered by Reggie Kray in Stoke Newington in October 1967; the killing anchored the 1969 Old Bailey convictions that ended the Krays.
Kinahan Organised Crime Group
Kinahan Organised Crime Group (Kinahan cartel): Irish-led transnational drug trafficking and money laundering organisation founded by Christy Kinahan, based in Spain and Dubai, US-sanctioned in 2022, in feud with the Hutch gang.
List of Italian Mafia crime families
Italian Mafia crime families are the family and clan units of Cosa Nostra, the 'Ndrangheta, the Camorra, and Apulian groups such as the Sacra Corona Unita, covering their structures, notable clans, and state response.
Omertà
Omertà, also called the law of silence, is the code of silence of the southern Italian mafia, forbidding any cooperation with state authorities and punishing breach by death.
Organised crime in Ireland
Organised crime in Ireland: family-based gangs (Kinahan, Hutch), the New IRA, cocaine trafficking via Dublin and ports, GNDOCB and Criminal Justice Act 2006 responses, €390m seizures since 2019, and the €157m MV Matthew case.
Organized crime in Italy
Organized crime in Italy: Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, Camorra, and Sacra Corona Unita, mafia-type groups defined by Article 416-bis (1982), trafficking drugs and infiltrating public procurement and the legal economy.
Sacra Corona Unita
Sacra Corona Unita (SCU), Italy's "fourth mafia," is a mafia-type organization founded in an Apulian prison in the early 1980s by Pino Rogoli, active in smuggling, drug trafficking, and extortion.
Salvatore Riina
Salvatore (Totò) Riina, Corleone-born boss of bosses of Cosa Nostra 1982–1993, won the Second Mafia War, ordered the Falcone and Borsellino bombings, served 26 life sentences, and died in Parma in 2017.
Serbian mafia
Serbian mafia: organized crime groups based in Serbia, also called Balkan cartel groups, dominant in cocaine and arms trafficking, hierarchically structured, with documented state security ties since the 1990s Yugoslav collapse.
Solntsevskaya Bratva (Солнцевская братва)
The Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Solntsevo Brotherhood, is a Russian organized crime group formed in the 1980s in Moscow's Solntsevo district, led by Sergei Mikhailov and Viktor Averin.
Turkish mafia
Turkish mafia: organized crime groups of Turkish origin in Turkey and the European diaspora, rooted in Laz migrant syndicates of early-20th-century Istanbul, historically dominant in the Balkan heroin route and now active in cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking.