Mobsters pocket income support in Italy

ROME: More than 100 Italian mobsters have embezzled income support destined for the nation’s poorest, including the son of a mafioso nicknamed "the Italian Pablo Escobar," police said on Wednesday.

All 101 belonged to the powerful ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and included wealthy gangsters with close ties to bosses or with key roles within the organised crime group, a statement said.

Alessandro Pannunzi, the son of a man dubbed Italy’s version of Colombian drug lord Escobar, was among those cashing in. His father Roberto was "unanimously considered by Italian and American investigators to be one of the world’s most important cocaine brokers, and who boasted that he did not count his money, but weighed it", police said.

Alessandro’s wife is the daughter of "one of the main Colombian cocaine producers," it added. Each of those nabbed will have to pay back their share of the 516,000 euros ($566,000) stolen from the state.

The mobsters had submitted claims under false identities, Italian media reports said, and police were investigating whether those tasked with inspecting them may have had ties to the criminal underworld.