Sanne de Boer

An ecstasy, yeah.

And that's probably an Australian-Dutch connection as well there because it's in Holland, it's in Southern Holland and Belgium that most of the world's ecstasy is produced.

So it was very probably produced in the Netherlands, then brought to Italy and transported to Australia.

Yeah.

Yes, I believe it's their largest part of their income.

They do, of course, also make a lot of money from just public contracts and drugs.

Some extortion, not always extortion as in asking for protection money directly, but often also forcing people to buy products that are really highly priced.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

In our country, there's a lot of investments in the hospitality sector, but it could be anything.

And I believe also in Australia, there's, of course, the construction sector, the agriculture, many, many areas.

What we've seen in investigations usually is that Ndrangheta clans collaborate with other more violent criminal groups in all these territories.

So that what they actually do is that they come away with, they get away with it, basically, because the more violent criminal groups get targeted by law enforcement.

And that's what was brought to light by Operation Ironside in Australia.

And it was in 2022 that the motorcycle, the outlaw motorcycle gangs were actually collaborating with the Drangheta in the drug smuggling case.

Crime as a service, they call it, at least I believe.

Yeah, yeah.

And so when these criminal groups get a chance to sort of evolve, and this is what happens.

Their exploitation is not just of regular citizens, but it's also of other crime groups.

Yeah, it's very corporate almost, isn't it?