FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the Olympic rings on the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium, which will host the curling, wheelchair curling, and Paralympic closing ceremony during the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games 2026, in Cortina, Italy, January 25, 2025. REUTERS/Claudia Greco/File Photo
ROME (Reuters) -Two brothers from a notorious Italian soccer hooligan group, Lazio's "Irriducibili", have been arrested after trying to illegally obtain public works contracts for next year's Winter Olympics, Italian prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The men, originally from Rome, sought to profit from the Olympics after establishing mafia-style control over drug dealing and nightlife activities in the Alpine resort of Cortina, Venice prosecutors said in a statement.
Cortina, in northern Italy, is co-hosting the February 6-22 Winter Games with Milan.
The arrested men reportedly posed as high-level members of Rome's criminal underworld, vaunting their friendship with the late leader of the "Irriducibili" Fabrizio Piscitelli, who was gunned down in a Rome park in 2019.
"Irriducibili" roughly translates as "diehards".
The alleged gangsters terrorised business rivals in Cortina, prosecutors said, mentioning the case of a nightlife events organiser who was dragged into the woods, beaten up and held at gun point.
A man who owed them drug money was locked up in a car boot and threatened with death, and two "unauthorised" drug dealers were also beaten up.
In 2022, the pair approached a member of Cortina's city government, offering electoral support, which the politician did not accept. They later asked to be given Olympic contracts with a threatening message, prosecutors said.
The brothers, one of whom was put in pre-trial detention while the other is under house arrest, are accused of extortion, aggravated by mafia-style methods. Five more suspects face the same charges, but were not arrested.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editin by Ed Osmond)
