In the machine room of the mafia

Top people of the Aargau Ndrangheta clan of the Anello-Fruci are in custody in Italy-business with its brutal methods continues in Switzerland.

In May 2017, the Italian host of an Aargau restaurant called the sister of clan bosses Rocco and Tommaso Anello. Her brother Tommaso applied to him the evening before to deliver another Italian « on his behalf an » Imbasciata « . This « message » was: « Give him the money, point and end. »

The episode has been handed down because the telephone conversation, which the host led over the Swiss landline with the boss’s sister, was listened to by the police.

The debtor was a singer living in Aargau with Sicilian roots, which had had a video clip turned with the financial support of the Anello clan. Now the clan wanted to collect the debts.

Anyone who ignored such “messages” had to count on everything. Another case illustrates that.

« Don’t know who would come to kill them »

The debtor, another host in Aargau, received the request to repay CHF 75,000 in 2018. They were deposited in a “snowball system”. One member of the clan threatened the man: there were Kalabrians all over the world that he would find it everywhere. The next day, the man delivered the money in an envelope in a restaurant. Nevertheless, a week later he was « beaten up by an Albanian ». This was later told by a clan member of a V-man of the Swiss police.

What would have happened if the debtor hadn’t paid?

A note can be found in files for the anti-mafia surgery Imponimento, where the Swiss federal police worked and which led to the arrest of the “Aargau mafiosi” in 2020. In 2019 one of them said to the Swiss V-man: Usually he would « ask his friend in Calabria for this kind of problems for someone who could solve them ». But the « friend », meant, was a clan boss Rocco Anello, is currently in prison, so that doesn’t work. He himself did not know « who would come to kill them ». But the « friend » in prison knew about who could do that.

In the past twenty years, the Anello clan can easily be assigned to several dozens of gastro businesses in German-speaking Switzerland. Not only pizzerias, but also bars and night clubs almost in all of German -speaking Switzerland.

Lenzburg once as the center of the clan

The center of the clan was at the beginning of observers in Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau. In one of the pizzerias in Lenzburg, the boss’s sister appeared at times as the owner. Together with an Italian cook.

After work he disappeared two hours

During this time, the cook was active in at least five restaurants and bars in Aargau as a host, obviously he was a straw man. He was always disappearing for two hours after work, a friend recalls. He probably had to make the daily income.

In 2016, the Lenzburg company, through which the restaurant ran, was left bankruptcy, in 2017 the bankruptcy proceedings “lack of active” was discontinued.

Which did not prevent the suspected mafiosi from selling the restaurant for CHF 150,000 to a “Turk from Germany”.

A host of the federal police gave these details, as can be seen from files of an anti-mafia operation.

The buyer belonged to a group of Turkish citizens who are very active in Switzerland recently, including in the pizza business. A pizzeria in the Emmental was one of them. The Turks are still connected to the Anello clan, as a look at social networks shows.

Furthermore, combined with the clan is also a Kosovar citizen who took over from the Calabrians about 15 years ago. He was an « absolute pipe », says a gastro expert who knew him. But obviously the man had money available. In the meantime, he also runs at least one pizzeria in the canton of Solothurn, in which the boss Anello boss runs.

So proven rope teams play here. The bosses may be in jail, but the business continues, someone has to look here after the investments, and the next generation has long since been active in Switzerland. The sister’s predominant son is always here, marked certain restaurants on social media. The same applies to the son of the boss, he had once rented a parking space in Muri. The fact that weapons in the gang have always played a central role does not really make things better.

The presumption of innocence applies.