ROME (Reuters) – Italian police said on Thursday they had seized a large stash of weapons from the home of Raffaele Imperiale, a detained mafia boss who previously made headlines for possessing a couple of stolen Vincent Van Gogh paintings.
According to a statement by the Naples prosecutor’s office, police found more than 80 weapons hidden under the garage floor of Imperiale’s house, including three Kalashnikov rifles, a grenade, and 5,067 rounds of ammunition of various calibres.
In 2016 police recovered two Van Gogh paintings, stolen from an Amsterdam museum in 2002, from one of Imperiale’s properties near to Naples. Each was worth an estimated 50 million euros ($58 million).
Imperiale is alleged to be a key figure in international drug trafficking and money laundering and to have a close relationship with the Camorra mafia centred around Naples.
He was arrested in Dubai in 2021 and extradited to Italy the following year.
(Reporting by Francesca Piscioneri, editing by Alvise Armellini and Keith Weir)
