Italian prosecutors warned Slovakian authorities about "dangerous" infiltration by a powerful Italian organised crime syndicate even before a reporter was shot dead, according to a top anti-mafia fighter.

Anti-mafia police have seized €50m in assets and detained more than 160 people in Italy and Germany, accusing them of running a huge mob-controlled empire.

Police in Italy, Spain and Germany have arrested 32 people suspected of trafficking drugs and laundering money, in a European operation against the Camorra crime syndicate.

One of Italy's most-wanted mafia bosses has been arrested after five years on the run when police found him hiding in a home bunker built between the bathroom and his son's bedroom.

Italian mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, one of the most notorious crime figures of his time, has died in a Milan hospital at the age of 83.

Italian police have discovered an underground bunker in the countryside of southern Calabria with two fugitive mobsters holed up inside.

Italian police have discovered an underground bunker in the countryside of southern Calabria with two mobsters, considered among Italy’s most dangerous fugitives, holed up and sleeping inside.

Fugitive Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro communicates with henchmen using written messages buried in soil or hidden under rocks on sheep farms, investigators said.

Italian police seized assets worth more than €1.6bn from five Sicilian siblings suspected of links to the island’s Cosa Nostra mafia, in one of the biggest ever such operations.

The father of the two former assistants to Nigella Lawson, who were cleared last month of defrauding her, has been arrested in Italy over alleged links to the Mafia.