The Court of Cassation has officially closed the landmark “Grimilde” trial, confirming it hegemony of the Grande Aracri ‘Ndrangheta gang in Brescello, Emilia-Romagna. Francesco Grande Aracri’s appeal was declared inadmissible, sentenced to 19 years and 6 months and increased to 24 years on appeal in 2024, recognized as head of the association. The court deemed it proven, with an “impressive evidentiary framework”, the family’s roots in Emilia’s socio-political and economic fabric: contracts awarded to shell companies, tax fraud, money laundering and ties to local administrators that led to the dissolution of the city council in 2015.
In rejecting the defense’s grounds for appeal, the defense reiterated the key distinction between an ordinary criminal association – motivated by profit – and a mafia organization, which using crime as a means to impose social control, consolidate power and obtain parasitic economic benefits. It was precisely the power of intimidation, highlighted by the Supreme Court ruling, that made the conquest of the region possible. This operational model, which has appeared in other trials such as Edilpiovra and Aemilia, is also fully found in the Emilian context: the Court of Cassation speaks of an “impressive” body of evidence identifying the group’s activities since the early 2000swith Francesco Grande Aracri representing the fulcrum of business networks, figures and political-administrative influence capable of deep infiltration into local structures. Economic and real estate initiatives in the Reggio Emilia region are traced back to him, contracts obtained through privileged channels, the creation of the “Cutrello” district and the inclusion of symbolic places such as the Italghisa nightclub, considered a place of meetings and business. that painting, enriched with fake invoices, paper companies and money laundering mechanismsit depicts modern and dangerous crime, not too graphic but very sharp.
The infiltration was such that it led to the dissolution of the Municipality of Brescello in 2015. Coordinated by the Bologna District Anti-Mafia Directorate, “Grimilde” was born from an operation performed on June 25, 2019with 16 arrests made by the Police against people of the Grande Aracri cell, active in the areas of Brescello, Parma and Piacenza. From there, a long judicial process occurred which caused the Court of Cassation itself to state in 2023, protection of the Grande Aracri family in Emilia as an autonomous structure of Calabriaable to rely on important roots throughout the province of Reggio Emilia. The Supreme Court has handed down eighteen sentences that have become final, and sent six defendants to face a new appeal trial.
An important chapter of the process in question former president of the city council of Piacenza and former official of the Customs Agency, Giuseppe Carusowhose sentence of 12 years and 2 months in prison has been confirmed: 8 years and 2 months for the mafia – his belonging to the Grande Aracri gang has been officially certified -, plus 4 years for further Agea fraud. That man did too sentenced to compensate the municipality of Piacenza with one million euros. At that time Caruso was a member of Fratelli D’Italia, but the party immediately expelled him. Together with him, his brother Albino Caruso was also sentenced to six years and ten months in prison for mafia associations.
Therefore, with “Grimilde” we have achieved full confirmation of this the spread of the ‘ndrangheta in the political, economic and social context of Emilia-Romagnaalready emphatically explained in previous years by the judicial findings of the Aemilia Maxitrial, in which severe sentences were imposed and the “articulated and differentiated associative program” of an organization equipped with its own people and resourcesautonomous from the “cosca madre” of Calabria.
