It is widely believed that the Mafia owed its power to Giulio Andreotti (1919-2013), the leading statesman on the post war years. The sevenfold Prime Minister of Italy stood accused of collusion with Cosa Nostra. But Andreotti has been absolved from any charge in 2004.

he was acquitted only after 1980, before that time he was clearly linked with Cosa Nostra but the crime has been prescribed, so yes he was linked with the mafia

What is not in dispute is that Andreotti's name was on the list of the secret masonic lodge P2 of Licio Gelli.

yes, but it cannot be disputed that he was connected to the mafia because before 1980 it was proven but too much time passed and the crime became statute-barred; even after 1980 there is evidence that he was in collusion, such as the meeting with the boss Andrea Mangiaracina in 1985

Yep, I do believe that him and the Italian state used Cosa Nostra not the other way around, but in Sicily they needed the votes.

And like said by Buscetta the Mafia needed their protection it. Wasnt really war against the state but against their enemies the state itself in post war Italy was also involved. Years of Lead.

The Relationship Between Giulio Andreotti and Cosa Nostra
Stephen Baudino February 08, 2021
After the murders of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, something extremely important happened. Tommaso Buscetta , the informer whose statements about Cosa Nostra had contributed to sending many high-caliber mafiosi to prison and to launching an unprecedented offensive against the Cupola, decided to speak out about the connections between the mafia and politics, about which he had remained silent until that moment. He said he wanted to do so because Giovanni Falcone would have wanted him to : Buscetta said that, after the deaths of Falcone and Borsellino, providing the magistrates with the information he possessed regarding the points of contact between Cosa Nostra and the world of institutions was a moral duty for him. In particular, when questioned in September 1992 in Washington, Buscetta outlined the contours of the relationship between Salvo Lima , who was the intermediary between the Rome of the Government and the Palermo of the Mafia, and the Cosa Nostra Commission, going so far as to state that he was aware of the fact that «top-level exponents of Cosa Nostra had had political contacts in Rome, using the Salvo cousins ??as a 'bridge', even without Lima's intervention» . About a month earlier, the pentito Leonardo Messina had also spoken out . In front of the Palermo Prosecutor's Office, he stated that he had learned from other men linked to the Mafia that Salvo Lima «had been very close to men of Cosa Nostra, for whom he had acted as an intermediary with the Hon. Andreotti for the needs of the Sicilian Mafia» . Although he said he did not know the names of Salvo Lima 's Roman political contacts , the pentito Giuseppe Marchese , in September 1992, also made statements that were in line with those of Messina. In March 1993, the repentant Gaspare Mutolo indicated Andreotti as "the person to whom the Hon. Salvo Lima constantly turned for decisions to be taken in Rome, which involved Cosa Nostra interests" . Giulio Andreotti (pictured) was investigated for complicity in criminal association for the period up to 28 September 1982 and for complicity in mafia association for the period after that date (since, only in that year, the crime of mafia association officially entered the Italian penal code thanks to the Rognoni-La Torre law). On 13 May 1993, the Senate of the Republic granted authorization to proceed against Andreotti. On 2 March 1995, he was sent for trial for the crime of participation in the Cosa Nostra mafia association.
In the first instance, on 23 October 1999, Giulio Andreottihe was acquitted for lack of evidence by the fifth criminal section of the Palermo Court, although, as Gian Carlo Caselli and Guido Lo Forte (the first, then, Public Prosecutor at the Palermo Court, the second deputy prosecutor) recall in their essay " The truth about the Andreotti trial ", the sentence largely confirmed the prosecution's case regarding Andreotti's relations with the Salvo cousins, the relations between the Andreotti faction of the DC in Sicily and Cosa Nostra, Andreotti's relations with Vito Ciancimino , the relations between Andreotti and the fixer and criminal Michele Sindona (defined, in the sentence, as a man "linked to authoritative exponents of the mafia association, on whose behalf he carried out money laundering activities" ) and Andreotti's meetings with high-profile members of Cosa Nostra.

Andreotti also got a 24-year sentence for ordering the 1979 murder of the journalist Mino Pecorelli, although he managed to get himself acquitted in supreme court. Although I don't think the acquittal had anything to do with him being innocent or guilty, the judges likely just thought it would be too embarassing to uphold a murder conviction for somebody who has been the country's prime minister several times. But Andreotti still was a murderous scumbag, imo...The Salvo cousins from Salemi supposedly delivered his request to kill Pecorelli to Stefano Bontate and Gaetano Badalamenti who organized the hit.

Mino was described as a "maverick journalist with excellent secret service contacts". However he was also a member of P2.