A convicted killer believed to belong to one of Italy’s most powerful mafia organisations has been discovered working as a pizza chef and arrested after nearly 16 years on the run.
Edgardo Greco, 63, was taken into custody in Saint-Etienne, France, on Thursday, where he had at one point been working as a pizza maker, French prosecutors said.
He is suspected of belonging to the ‘Ndrangheta mafia organisation in Calabria, southern Italy.
Described as a “dangerous fugitive”, Greco was wanted in Italy to serve a life sentence for the murders of Stefano and Giuseppe Bartolomeo, Interpol said on Thursday.
Italian authorities said brothers Stefano and Giuseppe Bartolomeo were beaten to death with a metal bar in a fish shop in Calabria in 2006.
Greco is also accused there of the attempted murder of Emiliano Mosciaro as part of a mafia war between the Pino Sena and Perna Pranno gangs in the early 1990s.
In Saint-Etienne in June 2021, Greco became the owner of an Italian restaurant called Caffe Rossini Ristorante, running it until November 2021, French prosecutors said. According to documents seen by Agence France-Presse, he used the name Paolo Dimitrio and also worked in other Italian restaurants in the city.
A still-open Facebook account for the Caffe Rossini Ristorante, which now appears to have been closed down, shows local press covered its opening in 2021.
Greco also worked evenings in a pizza restaurant under his assumed name, according to Italian media.
After his arrest in the early hours of Thursday morning, he appeared before an investigating magistrate in Lyon who formally notified him of Italy’s arrest warrant, prosecutors said. He was then placed in detention.
Greco’s arrest was made possible with help from Interpol’s “Co-operation against ‘Ndrangheta Project”, which supports police collaboration between its 195 member states.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the arrests demonstrated his country’s commitment to “fighting all forms of organised crime and locating dangerous fugitives”.
His arrest also came two weeks after Italian police arrested one of the most notorious bosses of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia, Matteo Denaro, 60, who had been on the run for 30 years.
The 60-year-old was arrested after visiting a health clinic in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, where he was being treated.
Investigations by Italian prosecutors in Catanzaro and police in Cosenza — both in southern Italy — led to the arrest, the Interpol statement said.
“No matter how hard fugitives try to slip into a quiet life abroad, they cannot evade justice forever,” Interpol chief Jurgen Stock was quoted as saying in the statement.
