Contrary to conventional Camorra bosses Ammaturo remained a loner. He had no specific territory, no crime family and specialised entirely in cocaine trafficking, above all with Bardellino. The drug trade gave him wealth and power, although he lacked social control and even less political influence in Italy. The particular success of Ammaturo was the result of his innovation to set up a triangular system of cocaine smuggling, involving several African countries as staging posts, rather than just using the traditional South American-European axis. He diversified his interests on a global scale, buying a tourist centre in
Senegal through a Swiss bank account. and spent three months in jail in
Brasília awaiting extradition. However, he managed to escape, after paying some US$100,000 in bribes and was flown to Peru. In March 1992, nine of his associates were arrested following the discovery of 10 kg of cocaine which had arrived from
Colombia. The cocaine was soaked into clothes which were then smeared with solvents to distract sniffer dogs; the clothes would then be treated in
Castellamare di Stabia and the cocaine reconstituted. A drug smuggling operation of an even bigger scale was discovered in July 1992, involving the importation of 300 kg of cocaine from Colombia via Peru. ==Arrest and repentance==