Rome, Oct 3 (IANS/AKI): Police have arrested a Calabrian mafia suspect in southern Italy who had been at large for the past four years.

Mario Bruni, 31, was arrested overnight in Canosa di Puglia in the Puglia region. He is wanted for drug trafficking for a Crotone-based clan of the Calabrian mafia or 'Ndrangheta, police said.

Police said they nabbed Bruni in a car with his Romanian girlfriend and a local man with a criminal record.

Bruni's arrest came amid a probe of 24 people spearheaded by anti-mafia prosecutors in the Calabrian regional capital.

The suspects face charges including drugs and arms trafficking, and intimidating local businesses and mafia informants, according to police.

During his years on the run, Bruni had lived in the German city of Frankfurt where he lived with a 25-year-old Romanian businesswoman and worked for an import-export company, police said.

Italian and German police in July arrested 10 suspects accused of associating with the 'Ndrangheta and 'exporting' to Germany clans from the Calabria-based mafia organisation.

The 'Ndrangheta, Italy's wealthiest mafia, emerged in the mid-1970s to become one of the world's most powerful criminal groups.

It runs a drugs and extortion business worth billions of euros, has links to Columbian drugs cartels and operates throughout Italy as well as in Europe, North America and Australia.