AN ITALIAN mafia boss who has been on the run for nearly 25 years has been caught in Alicante, according to National Police.
Fausto Pellegrinetti had been living in a luxury penthouse apartment in an exclusive area of the Mediterranean city under an assumed name with a forged ID card.
It was here that he was arrested in a mammoth operation involving the Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia squad from Rome following two years of investigations.
Pellegrinetti, who also went by the first names of Franco and Enrico as well as Fausto, was a high-up member of the La Magliana mafia who escaped 'house' arrest at a private clinic in Rome in 1993 and went on the run.
Three international arrest warrants have failed to lead to his capture until now.
He had been sentenced to 13 years in jail for trafficking over half a tonne of cocaine and laundering six billion Italian lire (about €3.1 million) earned through drug-dealing.
Pellegrinetti's criminal career started in 1980 when he joined the Magliana clan after meeting with them in a restaurante in the Trastevere district of Rome, and he is known to have maintained close links with the famouse Marsigliesi, Berenguer, Bellicini and Bergamelli clans.
Between them, the Magliana mafia members were involved in clandestine gambling, kidnapping, theft and blackmail.
Italian authorities were on his trail by 1992 after tracing the origin of funds earned by the clan to a mass drug-smuggling operation from North America to Europe and to Colombia and catching Pellegrinetti red-handed on the Via Aurelia in Rome with over US$1.5 million (€1.23m) in cash on him.
After escaping a private medical clinic in Rome in October 1993, where he was under house arrest, Pellegrinetti fled the country.
He is now known to have continued with his mafia-style activities from the Costa del Sol – large quantities of cocaine, up to 500 tonnes, were delivered to Rome regularly over the years and at least US$55m (€45m) laundered by his organisation, of which Pellegrinetti became leader, with Primo Ferraresi as his 'right-hand man'.
Both men retained close ties to other mafia groups in Calabria.
But Pellegrinetti was never caught on the Costa del Sol, and eventually moved some 700 kilometres away to Alicante on the east coast to cover his tracks.
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