The Port of Gioia Tauro is a large seaport in southern Italy. It is the largest port in Italy for container throughput, the 9th largest in Europe and the 6th largest in Mediterranean sea.

A report on mafia influence in Gioia Tauro prepared for the European Commission in 2012 concluded that the “internationalisation of ‘Ndrangheta activity in the 1990s went in parallel with the construction of Gioia Tauro”. It said organised crime had “enjoyed a bonanza” as a result of the port operations, in which “the entire gamut of internal or subcontracted activities is mafia influenced, from the management of distribution and forwarding to customs control and container storage”. During one trial, it was found that 35 percent of businesses operating at the port had links to mafia.

The gangsters not only funded part of the building of the port, companies controlled by them were involved in its construction and its operation.

As soon as the port opened for business in 1995, the most powerful local ‘Ndrangheta clans in the area, the Piromalli-Molé family in Gioia Tauro and the Pesce family in Rosarno, had started to wet their beaks by demanding a security tax of $1.50 from the port’s operators for every container.

The report said the port is increasingly being used as a waypoint for the trafficking of cocaine and other drugs onwards to ports in the Balkans, the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea, with a rising number of cocaine seized on its way from Gioia Tauro to Turkey, a country where gangs are increasingly involved in trafficking the stimulant drug.