Two Germans were among 31 people arrested in a raid on the mafia in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Assets seized included a giant wind farm, the Italian police said.

Italian police have seized assets worth 800 million euros ($960 million) including luxury hotels and restaurants from a Naples property developer accused of being a key player in the Camorra mafia.

A Sicilian priest who was murdered by the Mafia in 1993 was declared a martyr by Pope Benedict XVI, a step toward sainthood, the Vatican said in a statement on Thursday.

The seemingly unstoppable spread of Italy’s most powerful organised crime group has now seen it establish outposts in the UK and Ireland, according to anti-mafia judges.

Tirana Police Chief Bernard Caushaj announced on Monday that police had sequestered more than four million euro in assets from two convicted narcotics traffickers.

Police in Italy and six other European countries Monday arrested dozens of mafia suspects in an international anti-drugs sweep. Police said they seized six tonnes of cocaine and 10 million euros of assets during the raids.

Thirty people were arrested during an international operation against a Bulgarian-Italian cocaine smuggling ring. The operation, codenamed “Kings of Cocaine,” has been ongoing for several years, but suffered a setback in 2008 due to an information leak.

Just six years on from the last major football match-fixing affair, Italy once again finds itself mired in scandal

The overall amount of bribes may be $20 million at minimum though the funds were to be used for investment projects, the paper reported.

The police say criminals stole money from the accounts of foreigners by using methods like "skimming" or "phishing".