Map highlighting the region of Veneto in northern Italy.
The Nuova Mala del Brenta (NMB), also known as New Brenta Mafia or Venetian Mafia, is a criminal organization based in the Veneto region of Italy. The group is believed to have emerged in the late 1990s as a successor to the original Mala del Brenta, which was active in the area during the 1970s and 1980s.
Felice Maniero
The criminal organization's structure is like a Cosa Nostra and Camorra model, but more violent.[1] It is considered by the Italian government and Prefecture of Venice as including all the characteristics of Article 416 bis-cp,[2] the legislative definition of a mafia-type organisation with Mafia (Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, Camorra, Sacra Corona Unita, Società foggiana) affiliations within Italy.[3]
Original Mala del Brenta
The original Mala del Brenta was a powerful criminal organization that operated in the Veneto region during the 1970s and 1980s. The group was involved in a wide range of criminal activities, including drug trafficking, extortion, and money laundering. The group's name was derived from the Brenta Canal, which was used to transport contraband.
The group was largely dismantled in the 1990s after many of its members were arrested and convicted. However, a new criminal organization, the Nuova Mala del Brenta, emerged in the region in the late 1990s. The group is believed to have connections to the original Mala del Brenta and is said to be involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, and other criminal activities.
Criminal panorama of Veneto
Before the arrival of these high-calibre Sicilian mobsters, Veneto's crime problem was restricted to various disorganised gangs operating throughout the region. In the 1980s, just before the emergence of the Mala del Brenta, there were already a few organized crime syndicates that would later be incorporated under the central authority of the Mala del Brenta.
These organizations included:
"Clan Giostrai" -- various affiliated groups of nomad criminals, mostly from the provinces of Vicenza, Padova and Venice, of whom a number had a relation to the carnival fair businesses. These were involved in bank heists, robberies, the drug trade, and kidnapping for ransom.
The "Mestrini" group, based in Mestre, on the immediate Venetian mainland: a powerful group with strong ties to the Mala del Brenta, their most lucrative trade was drug trafficking, but the group was involved in a vast array of criminal enterprises. Most notably, the ownership of many abusive water taxis that would bring foreign tourists to shops and hotels in Venice that were owned by the clans associates. The "zoccolo duro" or top capos of the organisation were: Gino Causin, Gilberto "Lolli" Boatto, Paolo Tenderini, Roberto "Paja" Paggiarin and Paolo Pattarello.
The "Veneziani", the old criminal underworld of Venice, engaged in the same activities of the "Mestrini": the group was headed by the Rizzi brothers and Giancarlo Millo, nicknamed "The Martian".
The San Donà di Piave cartel, under the leadership of Silvano Maritan, nicknamed "The President", protégé of the confined Cosa Nostra boss Salvatore Contorno, the rivalry with another cartel based in the same area caused a number of violent confrontations and subsequently placed Maritan as capo of the eastern part of the province of Venice, that is until he gave up a percentage of his assets to Felice Maniero.
Life of Maniero
Maniero was born in the impoverished village of Campolongo Maggiore in Venice, where he started his own crew of local gangsters, composed of family members and childhood friends that would later hold the reins of his criminal empire. While becoming a major criminal presence in the area, he was befriended by a number of prominent Sicilian mafiosi who backed him up in his vision of uniting Veneto organised crime.
Maniero's establishment subsequently controlled all criminal ventures in the region; all other organised crime groups in the region had been subjugated by the group originating from Campolongo Maggiore and backed up by the Sicilians and also members of the Camorra. All except the exponents of the "Veneziani" clan, the Rizzi brothers, were feeling menaced by the mainland syndicates under Maniero, but the other "Veneziano" capo, Millo, was a personal friend of Maniero, and preferred collaborating with "Angel Face" and his allies.
While dining at a restaurant, Millo was shot and killed on March 17, 1990 by the Rizzi brothers, a violent feud ensued, between the Mala del Brenta and the "Veneziani", after six months, the Rizzi brothers and an associate were treacherously murdered in an ambush disguised as a meeting to discuss peace terms, Maniero placed Giovanni Giada as head of the Mala del Brenta in the Venetian lagoon. He was now in firm control of all Veneto.
Affiliations and criminal activity
The organisation has had a number of high-level political connections outside Italy (Croatia and Yugoslavia, Malta, Hungary and Austria).[4] At one point, Maniero was a personal friend of the son of the former Croatian president Franjo Tuđman and was involved in the supply of guns to Croatia, in the early 1990s.[5]
The organisation had a firm hold of nearly every criminal venture in the region, from money laundering to loansharking and extortion, but its major source of income was drug dealing; the group bought massive amounts of cocaine directly from the Sicilian and Colombian Mafia, as well as heroin from Turkish drug baron Nvo Berisa, who helped a number of Venetian mobsters in hiding in Turkey, including Felice Maniero and Antonio Pandolfo, the group's second in command.
Its members are exclusively native to the Veneto region, but with a number of associates operating in the region from Cosa Nostra, Camorra and it is believed from the Ndrangheta as well.[6] It is also known that Brenta mafiosi have colluded with Stidda members on a number of occasions involving a number of fraudulent scams at a Maltese casino in 2002.[7]
Original Mala del Brenta Downfall
The organisation was thought to be dismantled in late 1994, due to revelations that the former boss Maniero was captured by a task force of 400 policemen issued with the sole task of bringing Maniero and his associates down. After being arrested in Turin in 1993 (having previously escaped the Padua and Vicenza prisons) together with many of the top members of the syndicate.
Maniero, faced with life imprisonment, turned informant, helping the Italian police dismantle the organisation he himself had created, contributing to the arrest of more than 400 of the mob's members, as well as a number of judges, policemen, and local Venetian businessmen that had aligned themselves with the organisation.
Although it has been revealed that Maniero continued a number of criminal activities and many of his former henchmen re-organised the Mala del Brenta to ensure survival, it is now called Nuova Mala del Brenta or Nuova Mafia Veneta and it still influences many criminal ventures in the region, ranging from robberies and bank heists to arms and drug trafficking.
Recent years
"No Mafia Venezia è Sacra" (No Mafia Venice is Sacred) banner hanging over a restaurant in Venice across from the Rialto Bridge in 2019.
In 2018, Italian authorities arrested several members of the Nuova Mala del Brenta on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. The group was accused of smuggling large quantities of cocaine into Italy from South America and using sophisticated money laundering techniques to conceal their profits.
In 2021, the group was linked to the murder of a prominent businessman in the Veneto region. The businessman, who was involved in several legitimate businesses, was reportedly targeted by the Nuova Mala del Brenta after he refused to pay extortion money.
