Nine members of the Genovese and Bonanno families - two of the five families which have dominated the Sicilian-American mafia La Cosa Nostra in New York City - have been charged with multiple counts of racketeering, illegal gambling, money laundering and other offenses the U.S. Department of Justice announced last week.

Four members and two associates of New York’s Genovese crime family were charged with multiple counts of racketeering in a superseding indictment unveiled by a federal court in New York, a U.S. Department of Justice statement said on Tuesday.

Italian police detained a high-profile surgeon from Palermo and his son over their alleged links to the Sicilian Mafia and attempts to smuggle drugs from South America to Europe with the help of an Albanian man and an Alitalia flight attendant.

A U.S. judge sentenced a high-ranking member of the infamous Gambino Crime Family to more than three years in prison and ordered him to pay US$1 million in restitution as well as a $15,000 fine after the mafioso pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, the Department of Justice said.

Spanish police reported on Friday that they detained a fugitive connected to murder and drug trafficking, thereby ending the 19-year manhunt for mafiosi’s rearrest.

Italian police detained 11 suspected members of a Sicilian mafia clan from the village of Torretta, near Palermo. The clan is historically tied to the Cosa Nostra and the New York mafia and the suspects are accused of infiltrating the Sicilian political and economic institutions, as well as being affiliated with organized crime in New York, according to Italian Carabinieri.

For the first time in its history, the Catholic Church beatified a judge, bringing late Sicilian magistrate Rosario Angelo Livatino closer to sainthood more than 30 years after the Sicilian mafia killed him in 1990.

Italy’s four traditional mafias, along with their newer and smaller counterparts, are increasingly uniting during various criminal ventures to form one cohesive group, an Italian anti-mafia prosecutor said in an interview published on Monday.

Italian authorities detained on Tuesday 20 suspected members of three distinct mafia clans operating in the Naples area. Police said they believe the suspects trafficked hashish to Malta and cocaine to Italy.

The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a superseding indictment against several alleged members and associates of the Philadelphia branch of La Cosa Nostra (LCN), charging them with racketeering, loan sharking, extortion and drug trafficking. 

Hundreds of French, Beligian and Italian law enforcement officers arrested dozens of suspected mafia members in two separate operations executed on Tuesday in cooperation with Europol. 

On Monday, a judge sent the head of one of New York’s mafia families and his two associates to prison for life for the murder of a gang member who refused to help him collect debts.

Italian police in Sicily arrested on Wednesday 45 people believed to be linked to theCosa Nostra mafia, while German police arrested the clan’s deputy leader in the southwestern town of Wolzburg.

Police in Italy have arrested more than 90 members and associates of the Sicily-based Cosa Nostra syndicate, including a former star of the reality TV show Big Brother.

Italian police struck a blow against the Sicilian mafia on Monday when it arrested more than 30 members of the crime syndicate across the country.

Sicilian police seized gas industry companies, real estate, cars and cash in Italy, Spain and Andorra as part of a crackdown on money laundering operations by the infamous Corleonesi mafia clan, Palermo prosecutors said Friday.

Italian authorities arrested on early Tuesday morning one person and searched 25 homes looking for the alleged boss of a major Sicilian mafia clan who is hiding from them for more than two decades.

Italy’s military police descended upon Palermo, Sicily at the break of dawn Tuesday to arrest the alleged leader of Sicily’s notorious Mafia, also known as the Cosa Nostra, ANSA reported.

Italian authorities have seized €1.5 billion ($US 1.7 billion) in assets from the heirs of a late businessman who had allegedly built his wealth on funds provided by Sicily’s notorious Cosa Nostra organized crime group, the country’s Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate (DIA) announced Saturday.

Italian police announced on Thursday that they arrested 22 close associates of the boss of all bosses of the Sicilian mafia, who has been on the run since 1993 but still kept issuing orders on paper notes, or “pizzini,” some of which were hidden under a rock.