A Europe-wide crackdown on organised crime has netted more than 270 suspects and revealed fresh links between political figures and mafia-style networks, officials said on Thursday. The operation, codenamed Jupiter, involved simultaneous raids in 14 countries and targeted fraud, money laundering and corruption networks that investigators say have infiltrated governments and public institutions.
In Italy, prosecutors in Rome and Catanzaro widened their inquiry into the planned Messina Strait bridge, seizing mobile phones and financial records that allegedly show magistrates and politicians exchanging favours with organised crime. Documents cited by Il Fatto Quotidiano describe a “massomafia” system in which deviant freemasonry cells and traditional clans have merged into a single power structure. “Corruption has seeped into every layer of the state,” the newspaper wrote, noting that the investigation now implicates a sitting judge who allegedly helped arrange meetings between suspects and politicians during the 2025 Christmas concert at Montecitorio.
Across the Alps, German police in North Rhine-Westphalia executed dozens of warrants against a gang accused of posing as officers to extort victims. Using cloned police IDs and official-looking vehicles, the suspects allegedly coerced elderly residents into handing over cash under false pretences of unpaid loans. Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary region, regional police report “dozens” of similar scams in which callers impersonated officers from the economic crime unit, demanding immediate payments for fictitious debts.
Further east, Romanian authorities carried out 272 searches nationwide as part of Jupiter, targeting luxury-car trafficking rings that allegedly imported stolen vehicles from Spain, Germany, Italy and France. Six suspects have been detained after investigators found forged registration documents and tampered chassis numbers; eight high-end cars were seized in Dâmbovița, Ilfov, Buzău and Prahova counties.
In the United Kingdom, the Home Office confirmed an internal probe into Mitie, the government’s contractor for immigration removal centres, after whistle-blowers alleged staff had posted antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist content on social media. The contractor said it was reviewing “all available evidence” and would cooperate fully with regulators.
Separate cases highlighted the cross-border reach of financial crime. An Austrian man remains stranded in Nigeria seven months after authorities seized €1.4 million in undeclared cash from his luggage at Lagos airport. In Spain, meanwhile, prosecutors are examining whether cloned mobile phones smuggled across the US border in 2021 may provide key evidence against former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is under investigation for alleged corruption.
Judicial sources across the continent stressed that Jupiter is the largest anti-mafia operation in a decade, but warned that the scale of infiltration means convictions alone will not dismantle the networks. “We are dealing with an organism that has mutated,” said a senior Italian prosecutor quoted by Il Sole 24 Ore. “It is no longer just criminal; it is political, economic and institutional.”
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