Italy: Van Gogh-loving mobster's home housed huge stash of weapons

The home of a Vincent Van Gogh-loving mobster in Italy housed a large stash of weapons, enough to set a town on fire. Italian police announced on Thursday they had seized a big stash of weapons from one of the homes of Raffaele Imperiale, a mafia boss arrested in Dubai in 2021 and extradited to Italy in 2022. 

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 Naples. These two paintings were 'Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen' and 'View of the Sea at Scheveningen'.

Each was worth an estimated 50 million euros ($58 million). Until his arrest in 2021, he was on the list of the most wanted fugitives in Italy. 

Imperiale is widely reported to be a key figure in international drug trafficking and money laundering. He is cited to have a close relationship with the Camorra mafia centred around Naples.

According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Imperiale had been the part of one of the world’s largest drug cartels, with a virtual monopoly on the Peruvian cocaine trade and control on around one-third of the cocaine trade in Europe. 

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