Ciro Mazzarella

On 2 September 2018 Ciro Mazzarella died in his villa in the affluent neighbourhood of Posillipo, Naples, at the age of 78.

After his return to Naples, Mazzarella used to be much more reserved. Rarely in the news, in the early 2010s he decided to collaborate on an autobiography made by the author Fabrizio Capecelatro. The book was published in 2013.

In the early 1990s Mazzarella had already amassed a great wealth, and in 1992 he decided to move to Switzerland, after losing a war between Camorra clans in Naples. From his logistics base in Lugano, he created an enviable economic empire with cigarette smuggling that arrived from Montenegro. According to numerous investigations, during the early 1990s, Mazzarella would have several contacts in the top echelons of the Montenegro's government, and supposedly reached agreements with the Montenegrin politician Milo Đukanović. Mazzarella also conspired to gain control of Montenegrin government warehouses, which he would hold through a Panamanian company called Gisto, based in Lugano. According to the parliamentary inquiry commission of 1996, Ciro Mazzarella headed a true illegal empire: 200 billion lire in turnover, for a net profit of over 6 billion lire monthly (€4.4 million monthly, in today's exchange). In 2002 Mazzarella was arrested in Spain, and after his release from prison in 2006, he returned to live in Naples.

Born in a family of important Camorra members, Ciro Mazzarella aka 'o Scellone, was nephew of Michele Zaza, and considered his successor in the business. At the beginning he worked for his uncle's powerful clan, known in that time as the Zaza clan, but soon started his own business, specifically in the 1960s, buying small ships and starting his own smuggling empire, since then, he quickly demonstrated his entrepreneurial abilities. During that decade, he founded the Mazzarella clan, becoming independent from the Zaza clan, led by his uncle.

Ciro Mazzarella (Naples, 2 April 1940 – Naples, 2 September 2018) was a historical Italian Camorrista, known in the media as the "king of cigarette smuggling", founder of the Mazzarella clan and was one of the last remaining leaders of a bygone era of the Camorra.