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Police bust Mafia clan behind chocolate heist

Italian police have arrested 48 suspected members of the southern 'Ndrangheta mafia, the group thought to be behind the theft of 260 tonnes of Swiss chocolate in 2014.

Published: 1 October 2015 10:27 CEST

Police bust Mafia clan behind chocolate heist

Sweet booty: the merchandise nabbed by the thieves included 50 tonnes of Lindor chocolate balls. Phtoo: Umberto Salvagnin

The mafia members were arrested in a sweep that uncovered dealings in flowers and chocolates as well as drugs and arms, Italian anti-mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti said.

The mafia centred in southern Calabria have “great flexibility, adapting to markets that offer the most opportunity to get rich,” Rome deputy prosecutor Michele Prestipino told a news conference on Monday.

“This operation has shown that the 'Ndrangheta families today have the financial and human means to colonize outside their home territory,” Prestipino said.

The probe uncovered trafficking in 260 tonnes of Lindt chocolate worth more than €7 million stolen in Italy late last year and sold on in Italy, Poland, Austria and Switzerland, the prosecutors said.

In what was described as the biggest robbery of its type, thieves in Italy have stolen a staggering 260 tons of chocolate from Swiss company Lindt & Sprüngli in 2014.

The Zurich-based company initially confirmed the losses following an announcement by Italian police about the recovery of 50 tons of chocolate in Nola, near Naples.

The stolen chocolate — 5,000 boxes of the Lindor brand —was valued at €1.5 million, police said.

But it was just a portion of the booty stolen from an external warehouse in Milan in August, a Lindt & Sprüngli spokeswoman told the Tages Anzeiger newspaper.

The value of the stolen sweets is close to €8 million, Italian news agency Ansa reported.

The 'Ndrangheta are the most active, richest and most powerful organised crime syndicate in Europe, according to Italian authorities.

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Swiss chocolate consumption falls to 40-year low in pandemic

Photo: STEFAN WERMUTH / AFP

Swiss chocolate makers were perhaps expecting a sweet spot as people turned to comfort food during the pandemic but are instead facing devastating 2020 figures showing consumption in Switzerland melting to a 40-year-low.

Chocosuisse, the national federation of Swiss chocolate makers, painted a bleak picture this week of the impact that the Covid-19 crisis had taken on the industry, with plunging production, exports and even consumption.

And Lindt and Sprungli, one of the wealthy Alpine nation’s most famous chocolate makers, published its annual results Tuesday detailing a nearly 11-percent drop in its 2020 revenues, to 4 billion Swiss francs ($4.4 billion, 3.6 billion euros).

Amid lockdowns and a pandemic-fuelled economic crisis last year, it may not be surprising that Swiss chocolate makers overall saw their production fall, shrinking 10 percent compared to 2019, to 180,000 tonnes, according to Chocosuisse.

And exports, which account for nearly 70 percent of Swiss chocolate makers’ revenues, fell by more than that, slumping 11.5 percent in 2020, to 126,000 tonnes.

More surprising perhaps is that the country renowned for its love of high-quality cocoa products, where people gobble up more chocolate per capita than anywhere else in the world, also saw consumption drop.

Lowest since 1982

In fact, annual consumption fell to below the symbolic threshold of 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds) per person, dipping to 9.9 kilos — the lowest level since 1982.

A major contributor to the drop, Chocosuisse chief Urs Furrer told AFP, was the steep decline in foreign tourists, who tend to tip the consumption scales.

The per capita chocolate consumption in a country is calculated by dividing the volumes sold by the number of inhabitants, leading to inflated figures in Switzerland, where chocolate treats are a favourite souvenir.

“It would be impossible to calculate the exact consumption of residents, because in shops, the salespeople do not know if their customer lives in Switzerland or is a tourist,” Furrer said.

But the absence of tourists is not the whole explanation for last year’s decline. In Switzerland as elsewhere, the health crisis and accompanying restrictions including forced teleworking, has had a clear impact on consumption habits.

“Consumption also dropped in areas that are usually crowded with passers-by, like train stations and city centres,” Furrer said, pointing out that chocolate was often an impulse buy by people on the move.

Physical distancing requirements have also taken a toll on social occasions where handing over a box of chocolates might be expected.

“The sale of gift boxes of pralines has also declined,” Furrer said.

At the same time however, the sale of raw products like chocolate masse usually used by chocolatiers, bakeries and patisseries rose last year as more amateurs delved into making their own sweets at home.

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