Mafia arrests in Belmonte, the investigation started by the repentant former boss Bisconti
by Marco Volpe - 07 April 2022

In the investigations that led to the round-up with 9 arrests this morning (April 7) that redesign the mafia balance in Belmonte Mezzagno and tell the rise of Agostino Giocondo , an important role was played by a collaborator of justice, Filippo Salvatore Bisconti.

Bisconti, former head of the family of Belmonte Mezzagno, was a prominent element, so much so that he was part of the New Provincial Commission of the Palermo mafia. The repentant began his statements right after his arrest in the 2018 Cupola 2.0 operation.

Bisconti, an offender and son of the boss Ludovico, known as "il commendatore", has always been involved in the building construction sector and organically integrated into the Mafia context of Belmonte, despite having lived in Palermo for several years. He was arrested for the first time for the mafia on May 30, 1996, convicted, released from prison in September 2006 and subjected to special surveillance with the obligation to stay in Palermo. He returns to his cell two years later, in December 2008, involved together with 98 other people in the Perseus operation but from the process that ensued he came out clean.

New arrest in March 2015 in the Jafar operation with six other people and accused of mafia association and extortion. Finally, the involvement was in December 2018, in the Cupola 2.0 operation together with 49 other people, because he was held responsible for having been part of the new provincial commission of Cosa Nostra, precisely as head of the Belmonte Mezzagno / Misilmeri clan. The investigations carried out in that procedure showed that the top exponents of the districts of Palermo and its province, after the death of Totò Riina , had rebuilt the dome, the "governing body" of the Palermo mafia that coordinated the choices of common interest of the various territories

Filippo Bisconti, therefore, as head of the Misilmeri / Belmonte Mezzagno district, had been one of the members by right of the commission, sitting next to men of honor of the caliber of Gregorio Di Giovanni, of the Porta Nuova district; Settimo Mineo, from the district of Pagliarelli; Leandro Greco, of Ciaculli; Calogero Lo Piccolo, by Tommaso Natale / San Lorenzo; Francesco Colletti, from Villabate / Bagheria.

After the arrest Visconti decided to collaborate with the justice system. His statements were immediately considered particularly relevant, demonstrating a deep knowledge of the Palermo mafia territory and contributing to the capture of other members of the mafia.

In the reasons for the sentence of December 3, 2020 in the context of the Cupola 2.0 trial, the judge writes: "It should be noted that the judgment on the credibility of Bisconti and on the overall reliability of his statements is certainly positive, because all the indices have been fully verified. of reliability required and above all the extrinsic evidence acquired consisting of the results of a massive amount of wiretapping and targeted monitoring services are many ".

A very "respectful" story that of Bisconti, it is he himself who tells his own criminal story, illustrating the path and describing a series of facts, starting from his entry into the Cosa Nostra, in the family of Belmonte Mezzagno, between 1997 and 1998, through a "ritual combination" curated by the men of honor Benedetto Spera, Giuseppe Spera and Nicola La Barbera. He told the investigators that he became the head of the Belmonte family in the last period of the management by Vasta and Ravesi, in 2014. And it was the repentant himself, during an interrogation, who explained that in the Misilmeri district? Belmonte Mezzagno the mafia, although still tied to rather archaic values, had by now assumed a fluid structure and no longer subject to rigid hierarchical schemes, also due to the numerous arrests.