It was DiMaggio who pointed to the Carabinieri to Riina's driver.

there are not so many moroccans, instead they are connections with the tunisians in the cigarettes smuggling across the sea

Yes the highest level of the Italian State, I believe Binnu didn't have a choice he had to give him up. The Italian people were outraged after the terror campaign. After Riina he could seize power and oversee a return to more traditional Mafia practices.

Usury and lace: blitz of the carabinieri, seven arrests in Palermo
by Francesco Patanè

Victim of the organization, which belongs to the mafia gangs of Villagrazia and Monreale, a merchant from Palermo
DECEMBER 13, 2021
1 MINUTE READ
A Palermo merchant ends up first in the hands of the usurers, then of the extortionists, both belonging to the mafia families of Villagrazia-Santa Maria di Gesù and Monreale. The Carabinieri del Ros this morning carried out seven precautionary measures signed by the investigating judge of the Palermo court at the request of the magistrates of the district anti-mafia Directorate of the Sicilian capital, the deputy prosecutor Salvatore De Luca and the substitute Dario Scaletta.

Five suspects ended up in prison, two under house arrest. All by way of title must answer for extortion (attempted and consummated) and usury aggravated by the mafia method. The seven investigated belong to the Palermo district of Villagrazia-Santa Maria di Gesù and to the Monreale family. The blitz, called Operation Breccia, was triggered this morning after months of investigations by the military of the Ros and the provincial command of Palermo.

Mafia, 8 arrests in Palermo for drug trafficking control In prison, the leaders of the Pagliarelli district who supplied drug dealing squares with drugs and also allegedly paid the expenses for the maintenance of the families of the "associates" in prison
December 14, 2021
The way to make money is always drugs. And drug trafficking was "differentiated". The hashish arrived from Malaga, Spain, directly to Palermo via Campania couriers. The cocaine, on the other hand, came from Calabria.
Managing this incessant flow is the Pagliarelli mafia district in Palermo.
The regent of the Pagliarelli district, his right arm, two lieutenants and 4 couriers, the most active in drug trafficking, ended up in prison. The "Brevis" investigation the follow-up to the "Brevis" investigation of last April, again on the Pagliarelli mafia district which allowed "to find the continuing operation of that joint 'Cosa Nostra' in Palermo". Last April the Carabinieri had identified and arrested the alleged new top of the district, already arrested in December 2018 in the "Cupola 2.0" operation.
Even in this case, what emerges is the strict control of Cosa Nostra over the territory, so much so as to allow the "regent" to obtain from a private individual a luxurious villa with a Scarface-style swimming pool, where he lived with his family. Villa, however, which remained in the name of the rightful owner. The property is now under seizure.

People say that they're a shell, but looks to me like everything is just business as usual. Camorra, Cosa Nostra, and Ndrangheta all working together around the clock.

If I'm not mistaken the Moroccans are the main, or one of the main hash and marijuana connections to Italian organized crime.

A lot of marijuana is grown in Sicily , most of marijuana in Italy comes from Sicily.

Some of the most potent Hashish (Zero Zero, Ketama, Polm, Maroc etc..) is produced in the RIF mountains smuggled from Morocco to Europe and the rest of the world.

Can you imagine if cocaine grew in Italy, how much more chaotic that country would be with the groups they already have over there?

Or not even just Italy necessarily, just Europe period.

In northern Italy Moroccans have a bigger presence, Milano, Torino etc..

100mn seized from Mafia near Messina
Economic empire of businessman Busacca targeted

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 16 - Italian police on Thursday seized some 100 million euros in assets from the Sicilian Mafia near Messina.
Police said they had struck the economic 'empire' of Messina businessman Giuseppe Busacca, built on cooperatives to help the elderly and disabled in and around the eastern Sicilian port city.
He is accused of laundering money from a powerful clan based at Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto.
The seized assets include social cooperatives, farm and fauna firms, public entertainment venues, hotels and real estate.
(ANSA).

Very powerful guy died in July but wasn't mentioned till late November.

Mafia, the repentant Angelo Siino died: 'Minister of Public Works' of Cosa Nostra
November 26, 2021 | 19.24
According to Adnkronos, the 77-year-old repentant died on July 31st but the news was kept secret
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According to Adnkronos, the mafia repentant Angelo Siino, 77, the former 'Minister of Public Works' of Cosa Nostra , has died , the economic mind of the boss Totò Riina who, for years, managed public tenders on behalf of of Cosa Nostra. 'Bronson', as the collaborator of justice was called, died last July 31, but the news was also kept secret at the behest of the family.

Angelo Siino known as 'Bronson', from the good life to the mafia-procurement dossier
Siino suffered from diabetes and other conditions, including a form of senile dementia. His health condition clearly worsened after the suicide of his son Giuseppe, which occurred in 2019. The repentant decided to collaborate in 1997, in great secrecy, telling all the affairs of Cosa Nostra, entrepreneurship and politics (by Elvira Terranova).

They called hm Bronson because he resembled Charles Bronson.

Hollander, is the Mafia invisible? Like if I went to Italy would I know who's involved and who isn't?

El mafioso más buscado desde hace 20 años por Europol vivía en Galapagar y así agredió a un edil del PP

https://okdiario.com/espana/mafioso...alapagar-asi-agredio-edil-del-pp-8301915

Yes, it was Stidda member Gioacchino Gammino.

Of course it is , their goal is to stay low key. I went to Italy , even spent holiday in Sicily(Taormina to be precise) with fiancee. Visited a lot of places in Sicily during holiday , beautiful place , if u didn't know there is mafia , u wouldn't suspect a thing.

The murder of Mauro Rostagno, the final life sentence for the boss Virga
December 17, 2021
mafia, Trapani, Mauro Rostagno, Vincenzo Virga, Trapani, Cronaca
The Supreme Court has declared inadmissible the appeal of the boss Vincenzo Virga, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the journalist Mauro Rostagno. The judges of Section V also sentenced the mafia boss to pay the court costs. Thus becomes definitive the sentence against Virga, in prison since 2001, the instigator of the ambush of Rostagno, who died on September 26, 1988. The identity of the perpetrators is still a mystery. In the previous stages of trial, in fact, the killer of the Trapani mafia, Vito Mazzara, was first convicted and then definitively acquitted. With today's provision, the Supreme Court also sentenced Virga to reimburse the representation and defense expenses incurred in the present judgment by the civil parties, to which he will have to pay 3 million euros each.

Monday, December 27, 2021
Italy.In prison, “the most cultivated generation of mafiosi of all time”
Sentenced to life imprisonment for blood crimes, the former mafia bosses of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra take advantage of their time in prison to read and learn. Between brilliant university students and neophilosophers, the daily Domani paints a portrait of these criminals in love with culture.

There is a mafia that hardly resembles the one we have always known, vulgar and ignorant. The mafia of the past was that of cryptic little words full of mistakes written by Bernardo Provenzano. Or that of Totò Riina, who boasted of not having gone beyond CM2. In the lairs of ordinary mafiosi, bloodhounds always found a bible. And for the literature chapter, that was often all.

But the bosses who grew up in the shadow of the historic Corleonesi clan did not follow suit from their predecessors. On the contrary, they have found refuge in culture.

Locked up for a quarter of a century in cells that were nothing but holes, they found themselves alone with Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his Brothers Karamazov, Leo Tolstoy, Italo Svevo, Boris Pasternak, Luigi Pirandello, German philosophers, Protestant theologians , Virgil and Immanuel Kant. And so, in solitary confinement, was born the most cultured generation of Mafiosi of all time.

Eager to know, the sons of 41 bis [article of Italian law which determines a strict prison regime for mafia bosses] devour everything that is printed on paper. They assiduously frequent prison libraries, they urge their lawyers every day to convince prosecutors and probation officers to grant them special authorizations and various advantages, adding to their requests university certificates and credits. Like Filippo Graviano, who recently applied for an exit permit, attaching to his request the license he obtained in economics, as well as a certificate of attendance at a finance course.

While outside, we read less and less, inside, we devour books. The men of the old Cupola study, they immerse themselves in the history and mysteries of religion triggering bursts of 20/20 and mentions in humanist disciplines. The law which has forever closed the doors of their cells has opened wide those of education to them.

The story of Giuseppe Grassonelli [sentenced to life in 1992 for several murders] speaks volumes. Sent for the first time to the prison on the island of Pianosa, on November 15, 1992, he found under the mattress of his bunk a copy of War and Peace. He begins to read it, but, not understanding what is written, he bursts into tears of despair.

It was then that to save himself from the hell of perpetuity, he decided to throw himself body and soul into studies. After fifteen years of isolation, he gave birth to a memoir: “The Neapolitan Revolutionary Movements of 1799.

Aprnews with Courrierinternational

Man shot dead in drug turf war in Messina
Other man injured, out of danger in hospital

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 3 - A 31-year-old Italian man was shot dead in a drug turf war in Messina in Sicily on Sunday, police said.
The victim, Giovanni Portogallo, was shot down in the eastern city's Camaro district.
Another man, 35-year-old Giuseppe Cannavò, was seriously injured but is now out of danger in hospital, sources said Monday.
He was hit in the neck by a bullet.
Police arrested a suspect but soon released him Sunday night.
They are looking for another suspect.
The shooter and the victim are believed to be associates of Cosa Nostra. (ANSA).

This is no fucking good, get it together Cosa Nostra.

Southern Italian diocese temporarily bans naming of godparents
Jan 3, 2022
by Junno Arocho Esteves, Catholic News Service

Anti-Mafia police, wearing masks to hide their identity, escort top Mafia fugitive Giovani Brusca as he leaves Palermo's police headquarters to be taken to a maximum security prison, in Palermo, Italy, in this May 21, 1996, file photo.

A second diocese in Sicily, where the Mafia has had a significant presence for decades, announced a temporary ban on the naming of godparents for baptisms and confirmations.

In a decree that went into effect Jan. 1, Bishop Domenico Mogavero of Mazara del Vallo said the ban would be in effect "ad experimentum" (on an experimental basis) until the end of 2024.

"The office of godparent in the two sacraments of baptism and confirmation has lost its original meaning, limiting itself to a purely formal liturgical presence that is not followed by the accompaniment of the baptized and the confirmed on the path of human and spiritual growth," the bishop wrote.

Rather than having godparents or sponsors, he said, those being baptized, confirmed or welcomed into the church as adults will be joined by their parents or the person who prepared them for the sacrament.

In October, the Diocese of Catania introduced a similar three-year ban due to the use of godparents as means to strengthen family bonds, particularly within local Mafia families, rather than as an aide in the spiritual development of those who are baptized or confirmed.

Mazara del Vallo was once the home of the late Sicilian mob boss Mariano Agate, who led several Mafia families in the region.

It was also where mob boss Gaetano Riina — head of the Corleone, Sicily, clan which inspired the last name of the fictional mafia family depicted in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" — was arrested in 2011.

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has strongly criticized the Mafia and its use of popular religiosity and violence to exploit the poor and the suffering. During a 2014 visit to Calabria, the pope said members of the Mafia "are not in communion with God; they are excommunicated."

In May, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development also announced the formation of a working group that would aid bishops in the excommunication of those involved in organized crime.

Italian Mafia fugitive on run for 20 years caught after being spotted on Google Maps

https://nypost.com/2022/01/05/itali...ught-after-being-spotted-on-google-maps/

NY Post is so pro-State and pro-law enforcement, it just reeks of controlled media. Anyway, I doubt that he hadn't had contact with his family in 10 years, I don't believe that for a second.

Cannavò, the 35-year-old, died last night. The doctors were convinced that they had now managed to save his life, but his condition worsened until his death.

police coordinated by the DDA of Catania, arrested 16 members of the Pillera-Puntina clan on charges of mafia-type association, extortions and loansharking

the neomelodic singer Patrizio