Ndrangheta

'Ndrangheta

'Ndrangheta's structure
Founding location	Calabria, Italy
Years active	1860s–present
Territory	Based in Calabria; active in all Italy, with worldwide ramifications
Ethnicity	Calabrians
Membership (est.)	roughly 6,000
Criminal activities	Human trafficking, pimping, racketeering, drug trafficking, fraud, loan-sharking, weapons trafficking, waste management, money laundering, insurance fraud, corruption, extortion, murder, skimming, political corruption, contract killing, robbery and conspiracy
Allies	Campanian, Sicilian, American, Albanian and Russian mafias; Latin American drug cartels, including Los Zetas
Rivals	Occasional violent feuds between various 'Ndrangheta clans

The 'Ndràngheta (Italian pronunciation: [(n)ˈdraŋɡeta]) is organized crime centered in Calabria, Italy. Despite not being as famous abroad as the Sicilian Mafia, and having been considered more rural than the Neapolitan Camorra and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita, the 'Ndrangheta became the most powerful crime syndicate in Italy in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While commonly tied together with the Sicilian Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta operates independently from them, though there is contact between the two, due to the geographical proximity and shared culture and language between Calabria and Sicily. A US diplomat estimated that the organization's narcotics trafficking, extortion and money laundering activities accounted for at least 3% of Italy's GDP. Since the 1950s, the organization has spread towards Northern Italy and worldwide. According to a 2013 "Threat Assessment on Italian Organised Crime" of Europol, the 'Ndrangheta is among the richest and most powerful organised crime groups at a global level.

In 1861 the prefect of Reggio Calabria already noticed the presence of so-called camorristi, a term used at the time since there was no formal name for the phenomenon in Calabria (the Camorra was the older and better known criminal organization in Naples). Since the 1880s, there is ample evidence of 'Ndrangheta-type groups in police reports and sentences by local courts. At the time they were often being referred to as the picciotteria, onorata società (honoured society) or camorra and mafia.

These secret societies in the areas of Calabria rich in olives and vines were distinct from the often anarchic forms of banditry and were organized hierarchically with a code of conduct that included omertà – the code of silence – according to a sentence from the court in Reggio Calabria in 1890. An 1897 sentence from the court in Palmi mentioned a written code of rules found in the village of Seminara based on honour, secrecy, violence, solidarity (often based on blood relationships) and mutual assistance.