BERLIN, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- The number of members of Italian crime syndicates in Germany has risen dramatically, German newspaper Spiegel reported Tuesday.
Security authorities recorded a fourfold increase from 136 to 526 members of mafia organizations between 2008 and 2017, Spiegel cited an official governmental response to a parliamentary enquiry filed by the Green party.
Two groups in particular recorded rapid growth in Germany during the period. The Sicilian "Cosa Nostra" saw its membership shoot up by 520 percent to a total of 124 individuals. The Calabrian "'Ndrangheta" witnessed a 455-percent increase making it the largest Italian crime syndicate with a total of 333 members in 51 subgroups.
The German branch of the Napolitan "Camorra" group counted 87 members.
"Ten years after the murders of Duisburg we can see that all relevant Italian Mafia groups are active in Germany and that the number of their members has grown," Irene Mihalic, Interior spokesperson for the Green party parliamentary faction, said in response to the figures.
She hereby referred to a widely-publicized shoot-out between two rivaling 'Ndrangheta families in front of an Italian restaurant in Duisburg which left six dead.
"This development shows how urgent the need to act on the prevention of organized criminality is," Mihalic added.
The published figures only cast light on structures which had been uncovered by authorities and were therefore likely to understate the full extent of the problem, the German government noted in a statement.
The governmental response to the Green party's enquiry indicated that only 102 investigations had been taken place on federal and state levels against Mafia groups in the last 10 years. In comparison, the German Chief Federal Prosecutor has estimated that up to 900 new investigations will be launched in cases of suspected Islamic terrorism in 2017 alone.
"The small number of investigatory procedures against the Italian Mafia may indicate that specialized police forces do not have enough detectives for the issue area of organized crime," Mihalic warned.
