One dead after Italy police launch mafia sting

ROME (AFP) - Italian police have launched a stinging attack on the Camorra crime syndicate, issuing 90 arrest warrants and seizing dozens of businesses including bars and restaurants in the heart of Rome.

One suspect, a 43-year-old businessman from southern Italy, was killed after he threw himself out of a fourth floor window during a raid on his apartment in the Tor di Quinto area of the capital, police said in a statement.

Some 250 million euros (S$433 million) worth of goods were seized in the mammoth anti-mafia operation, the biggest carried out to date against the Naples-based Contini clan, which launders money and traffics drugs in the Campania region, Tuscany and Rome.

The clan's boss, 64-year-old Salvatore Botta, is already serving time in a Naples prison. His wife and nephew, who are accused of running the business for him from behind bars, were taken into custody during the sting, Rome's anti-mafia unit said in a statement.

The businesses seized include around two dozen bars, restaurants and ice-cream parlours situated in tourist-heavy areas of the capital, near Piazza Navona and the Pantheon, as well as luxury clothes shops in Naples.

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