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AFP PHOTO / Italian Police
Giuseppe Mandara, center, head of the biggest buffalo mozzarella manufacturing company in Italy, walks alongside policemen from the Anti-Mafia unit of the Italian police, after his arrest near Naples on Tuesday.
Police in Italy on Tuesday arrested the head of the country’s biggest buffalo mozzarella cheese maker and seized assets worth 100 million euros ($123 million) on suspicion of links to organized crime.
Giuseppe Mandara, who once called himself the "Armani of Mozzarella" in an interview, is thought to have been linked to a Naples mafia clan, according to a report by European news agency Agence France-Presse.
A report in Italy’s Il Denaro newspaper [link in Italian] said investigators believe Mandara received a bailout from the mafia when he was in financial trouble in the 1980s.
The Mandara Group is a major global exporter of buffalo mozzarella and is sold by large chains in Europe, Japan and the United States, AFP reported.
The investigation also includes charges of misleading consumers after the company was found to have mixed in cow milk with more expensive buffalo milk and labeled batches of ordinary provolone cheese as the more prestigious kind.
"We have seized the whole company," Paolo Di Napoli, an officer from the environmental protection arm of the Carabinieri police, told AFP.
Buffalo mozzarella sells in Italy for around 12 euros ($15) per kilo and can cost more than twice as much abroad, AFP said.
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Leave a Comment:
Did they use cheese to catch him ?? This story sounds cheesez if you ask me.
he borrowed money from the Mafia, rates were better than the banks.
"The investigation also includes charges of misleading consumers after the company was found to have mixed in cow milk with more expensive buffalo milk and labeled batches of ordinary provolone cheese as the more prestigious kind."
I guess this new meaning to that time honored phrase "Who cut the cheese?"
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Betcha that old paisan smells like a billy goat.
Mozzarella di bufalo is absolutely the best around. Having lived in Napoli for 6 years, I practically lived on the stuff. Imagine my disappoint when I returned home to find the US version (bland, no taste whatsoever) available in grocery stores.
Waves hand 'jedi fashion' - "This is not the cheese you are looking for."
Gou-da-bing!
All of a sudden i have a craving for pizza.
Poor Mafia... This is what they've been reduced too. From the crazy days of Al Capone, through the power player days of Jimmy Hoffa and Murder, Inc.....to cheese.
Apparently he forgot to say Cheese when they took the picture.
"links" to mafia,,,? whatever---i mean is it a crime to talk to these guys, do business with them, if they maybe protect you from governmental crime which is worse and never lets a private sector grow without taking a cut...Government corruption and evil walking around the streets taking advantage of good honest hard working citizens is exactly why the mafia started,, I mean out of respect, with all do respect mister MSN journalists and Italian law enforcement and/or FBI (or its equivalent) - all yoos so called "law abiding" citizens. If someone approaches me with a proposition or offers something, a service if you will, unique from socialist healthcare and tax payer security, who are we to automatically turn every Tony, Vinny and Harry away, its all a respect thing, and we must truly listen and try to understand and evaluate how this can better increase our mozzarella distributions, to reach it fullest potential to get the highest quality cheese out to the world. If that's a "link", than so be it, but the cheese and I did nothing wrong..that's the trouble with liberals today they want freedom when its the judgement on them but they are always willing to throw someone else under the bus.
If you were born and raised around Naples, you have mafia connections. It's just that way there.
THE big cheese didn't pay off the big rats,so they arrested him. How do you say,not to know the truth is just stupid, in Italian.