According to prosecutor Salvatore Boemi, the De Stefanos are the representation of the manager-criminal controlling a crime multinational with joint ventures with Raffaele Cutolo from the Camorra and Nitto Santapaola and Francesco Ferrera from Cosa Nostra in Catania.
[1] The De Stefano brothers, Paolo, Giovanni, Giorgio and Orazio would come to prominence as members of the 'Ndrangheta clan of Domenico Tripodo, the old boss (capobastone) of Reggio Calabria, who had acquired considerable financial resources through tobacco smuggling.
[1][3][4] Through the membership of covert Masonic lodges, the 'Ndrangheta bosses were able to contact law enforcement authorities, judges and politicians that were necessary to gain access to public work contracts.
Only at the end of the so-called First 'Ndrangheta war, which took place in 1974-76 and led to the deaths of Macrì and Tripodo as well as the rise of the Piromalli 'ndrina and the De Stefano brothers as the new leaders of the Reggio Calabria 'ndrine, was the new institution fully recognized.
[5] The war started with an attack on the brothers Giorgio, Paolo and Giovanni De Stefano in the Roof Garden bar in Reggio Calabria in November 1974 ordered by Tripodo.
The lawyer Giorgio De Stefano, a cousin of the boss Paolo, was elected for the Christian Democracy party (DC) in the city council of Reggio Calabria for many years, and Paolo Romeo, a member of Parliament for the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI) for several legislatures.
[8][11] They were also close to Lodovico Ligato, a Christian Democrat politician from Reggio Calabria and the former head of the Italian State Railways.
[1] In 1974, when businesses involved in the expansion of the port and steelworks in Gioia Tauro offered a three per cent kickback in order to be left in peace, the three leading 'Ndrangheta families at the time, Antonio Macrì, the Piromalli brothers and the De Stefano brothers rejected the offer and wanted to be sub-contracted on work carried in order to control the project.
In the 1980s, the De Stefano brothers controlled virtually the entire wholesale meat market of Reggio Calabria.
The conflict exploded in 1985, two years after the marriage and saw practically all the 'ndrine in the city of Reggio Calabria grouped into either one of two opposing factions.
[19][20][21] According to the sociologist Pino Arlacchi, the background of the war was the attempt of the De Stefano brothers to turn their accumulated wealth and power to account by claiming contracts for the Gioia Tauro port.
He maintained contacts with mafiosi from Sicily and Campania, in particular Leoluca Bagarella, Raffaele Cutolo, and Nitto Santapaola.
According to the police, the secret cupola picked "affiliates to be placed in the Italian parliament", and had a "decisive role" in many "electoral appointments in a municipal, provincial and regional level".