Blitz against Cosa Nostra in the province of Palermo, police arrested 13 members of Caccamo and San Mauro Castelverde "mandamenti" on charges of mafia-type association, extortions, drug trafficking and illegal possession of weapons. Among the arrested Rosolino Rizzo, boss of Cerda family

Real-life 'Romeo and Juliet' find love as their mob families feud

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europ...iet-find-love-as-their-mob-families-feud

ambush in the town of Palma di Montechiaro (Agrigento), the farmer Salvatore Amato, 44, with criminal records, was shot and seriously wounded

Mafia, 7 sentences for members of the Misilmeri clan
The second instance judges confirmed the 12-year prison sentence against the boss Pietro Formoso, believed to be at the top of the local family

Posted 1 minute ago
From editorial staff


The Court of Appeal of Palermo ordered seven convictions in the trial resulting from an investigation into the Misilmeri mafia. The second-level judges confirmed the 12-year prison sentence against the boss Pietro Formoso, believed to be the head of the local family. Six years and eight months were inflicted on Pietro Morgano, Vincenzo Meli, Lorenzo D'Arpa and Angelo Lo Cascio. Two years, however, to Stefano Zarcone while Francesco Paolo Migliaccio was sentenced to two years and four months. Absolutions for Dalila Garofalo and Davide Arcuri. The defense team is made up of lawyers Nino Mormino, Giovanni Castronovo, Raffaele Bonsignore, Antonio Gargano.

Ex Sicily governor definitively cleared of Mafia charges
Raffaele Lombardo acquitted of mafia association, vote buying

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 7 - Former Sicily governor Raffaele Lombardo was definitively cleared of Mafia charges on Tuesday.
The supreme Court of Cassation rejected an appeal by Catania prosecutors against a January 2022 acquittal on charges of external complicity in mafia association and vote buying.
Catania-born Lombardo, 72, was acquitted by the high court with the fullest formula possible, "because the crime was not committed".
The Cassation prosecutor general had requested the acquittal of Lombardo on the charges of helping Cosa Nostra.
Lombardo is also a former president of the Sicilian regional parliament.
Lombardo was originally sentenced to six years and eight month in the case in 2014. (ANSA).

Petrosino (Trapani), "mafia pact for votes": councilor arrested

A city councilor allegedly made an electoral pact with the mafia. Blitz in Petrosino. The carabinieri of the Provincial Command of Trapani arrested Michele and Marco Buffa, aged 50 and 47.

The precautionary custody order was issued by the judge for preliminary investigations at the request of the Palermo District Anti-Mafia Directorate.

The city councilor ends up under house arrest, while Marco Buffa is notified of another precautionary custody order in prison where he has been since last September. He was part of the list of 35 arrested in the "Esperia" blitz against Matteo Messina Denaro's men. They are both under investigation for political-mafia electoral exchange.

Marco Buffa, sentenced in the first instance to 16 years for mafia and definitively in the past for having favored some fugitives, would have procured votes for the candidate (elected in the UDC quota in the "Alternative Together for Petrosino" list) with 196 votes) in exchange for money and the promise to include some people reported in the pool of socially useful workers.

Last April, in the midst of the electoral campaign for the municipal elections in Petrosino, the two Buffas allegedly went around together looking for door-to-door votes in public housing.

There are also two other suspects. One is the president of the municipal council, Aldo Caradonna. They received a notice of custody and immediately searches.

Mafia, the repentant Gaspare Spatuzza returns to freedom
Convicted of the massacres, he decided to collaborate with Justice. Now he's got parole

https://www.unionesarda.it/en/italy/mafia-the-repentant-gaspare-spatuzza-returns-to-freedom-pib816a6

Last week 62-year-old Armando Palmeri from Alcamo was found dead in a villa in the Bosco alla Falconeria district, in the Partinico area, in the province of Palermo. He was a Mafia repentant, a trusted man of the boss Vincenzo Milazzo. An autopsy was ordered even if the most probable hypothesis is that he died of a heart attack.

Milazzo was killed by Messina Denaro his pregnant wife was strangled.

Police seized drugs worth about 215,000e from warehouse in Marsala, Sicily, packages of drugs were marked with photos of Toto Riina and Matteo Messina Denaro.

Really? All they sell is hash and they think they're big time? Cocaine is where the real money is. Or heroin.

Bagheria, Brancaccio, Porta Nuova: mafia and drugs, 17 arrests
THE BLITZ
by Riccardo Lo Verso
MARCH 23, 2023, 09:30
1' OF READING 0 Comments
PALERMO – Drugs, especially cocaine, bought by the bosses of Brancaccio and Porta Nuova flooded the squares of Bagheria. An axis had been created between the three mafia mandates.

The carabinieri of the Palermo investigative unit arrested 17 people: nine in prison and 8 under house arrest. Four others are required to report to the judicial police.

The investigations by the Palermo Anti-Mafia District Directorate are the sequel to the "Persephone" blitz which in 2021 photographed the handover between Onofrio Catalano and the new head of the Bagheria mafia family Massimiliano Fricano.

And it is under the strict control of the mafia that the drug trade would have been managed.

The heart of the shop was the home of a family, the Salernos. A husband, wife and two children who had turned their home into a drug operations center were arrested.

The investigation confirms the cross-section of a mafia whose main source of income is drugs. Brancaccio and Porta Nuova remain among the busiest mandates in the sector. The contacts for the wholesale purchase would be two names well-known in the news: Francesco Paolo Lo Iacono and Stefano Marino .

Francesco Paolo Lo Iacono, one of the biggest traffickers in cosa nostra.

Although in prison Salvatore Miceli was still involved in the cocaine business. Miceli (76) , believed to be the boss of Salemi and referred to by pentiti as the 'foreign minister' of Cosa Nostra, was arrested in Venezuela in 2009 and then extradited to Italy.

Conducted between 2012 and 2014 they monitored Miceli and conversations were recorded in prison also related to a seizure of 320 kilograms of cocaine in Colombia (in Santa Marta) on a coal ship bound for Amsterdam.

Giovanni Falcone in the sights of the ''new'' Gladio. ''Stay Behind'' didn't end in 1990
Luca Grossi 01 April 2023
Scarpinato: "Components of the Services have operated even after the end of the danger of a Soviet invasion"
The Gladio "Stay Behind" organization, formally created to counter a possible Soviet invasion, should have ceased its activity in 1990, that is when the then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, on August 3 of the same year, had revealed its existence before Parliament.
Covert operations, construction of ammunition and weapons warehouses (called Nasco) and unit training: all this was part of the 'doctrine' of "Operation Gladio", placed under the direct dependence of the Military Secret Services, first by the Sifar, then by the Sid and finally by SISMI in 1956 thanks to an agreement with the US CIA.
Its existence, in addition to Andreotti,Francesco Cossiga , Luigi Lui , Arnaldo Forlani , Vito Lattanzio , Attilio Ruffini and Lelio Logorio . Nobody else.
This protective umbrella of secrecy has covered numerous interests of the Secret Services over the years, as evidenced by some files that have now become public.
But not all secrets have been exposed.
The latest of these was revealed in recent days by the " TPI " magazine in a long eight-page article signed by Andrea Palladino : in reality the Gladio organization, under another form, would have continued operations even after 1990 thanks to the use of 'disposable agents'.
But let's go in order.
From documents viewed by " TPI " we learn that on 13 July 1990, in the offices of Forte Braschi - currently the headquarters of AISE and the Defense Unit Group - a division director (whose name is omitted) had sent a note to the director of SISMI: "Proposal for the establishment of a new structure within the seventh division". That is the sector of the military security service at the head of Gladio.
In the note, the anonymous officer had recalled some operations carried out together with the British services in the period of 1988 - 1989: "It aroused considerable interest - we read - the fact that the operators were all EXTERNAL agents NOT RECOGNIZED AS BELONGING TO THE SERVICE AND CONSIDERED TO BE OCCURRENCY 'DISPOSABLE' (in capital letters in the original text, ed .)
Or contractor.


earthquake document 1

First page of the SISMI document


Here is what would be needed according to the anonymous official: "an organization capable of conducting ALL THOSE OPERATIONS THAT CANNOT BE CARRIED OUT BY EFFECTIVE STAFF BECAUSE THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE NATION IN CASE OF NEGATIVE DEVELOPMENTS IS INVOLVED".
Such operations were nothing new as they were already widely used in Great Britain, the United States and France.
" It's shocking, practically one is asked to have a kind of license to kill, in a broad sense, in the style of the American secret services and the worst world services" said magistrate Felice Casson commenting on the documents. " This is basically asked, that is, to go against the norms, to have people to be able to 'burn'in which serious events take place that a State cannot claim" .
" As far as I know - he continued - this document has never been released up to now. I checked and it is not in the archives of the parliamentary commissions on the massacres, as far as I could see".
This new secret formation would have included former members of Gladio, "former members of the special forces", such as the ninth the Col Moschin battalion and the Comsubin, the commando commandos of the Navy, two corps that had already been used by Gladio at least from 1980 onwards,
but apart from this small glimmer of light it was not possible to go further.
The structure created after the dissolution of Gladio still remains a mystery that does not fall within the scope of the declassification desired by Mario Draghi .
The documents were also shown to the former attorney general of Palermo Roberto Scarpinato , now a senator of the Mov5Stelle. Reading the papers Scarpinato said that "the latest documents found confirm that crucial components of the Services have operated continuously over time, even after the end of the danger of a Soviet invasion, not as institutions of the legal state, subject to democratic control and the principle of responsibility, but as apparatuses of the so-called 'Deep State', putting in place out of control activities which, not being attributable to the legal State, could not have the cover of the State Secret. What has come to light up to now is, in my opinion , only the tip of the iceberg of a submerged continent" .

The shadow of the Gladio 'Scorpione' center on the Addaura attack
There is a chapter in the history of Gladio which still remains obscure today: the 'Scorpione' center (the Sicilian Gladiolus), stationed in Trapani, may have played a marginal or direct role in the failed attack on the Addaura of 21 June 1989 , consumed when Giovanni Falcone and his Swiss colleagues Carla Del Ponte and Claudio Lehmann were present , having arrived in Palermo for a rogatory letter on money laundering in the "Pizza connection" investigation.
The judges identified Salvatore Riina as principal; Salvatore Biondino (his right-hand man and substitute of the head district of San Lorenzo, at the time imprisoned, Giacomo Giuseppe Gambino ), Antonino Madonia(man of honor of the Resuttana family, where the Addaura is located, and son of the head of the homonymous district Francesco), Francesco Onorato (regent of the Partanna Mondello mafia family), Vincenzo Galatolo (representatives of the Acquasanta family , falling within the mandate of Resuttana) and Angelo Galatolo (son of Giuseppe and nephew of Vincenzo), as perpetrators of the crime of massacre; Giovan Battista Ferrante (man of honor of San Lorenzo) as responsible for the detention and port of the explosive.
It is not the first time that the name of Trapani has been associated, in trials, with deviant masonries, secret services (infidels) and mafias. Just think of the conviction for the bosses who had killed the journalist Mauro Rostagno in 1988, in which a highly confidential 1991 report by Sisde emerged, in which it is said that the managers of the Scorpion center met prominent members of some mafia families.


earthquake documents 02

Second page of the SISMI document


Also in that province in 1993, in the villa of a policeman, an enormous deposit of war weapons and explosives was discovered, the origin of which has never been understood and which many believe to be one of the arsenals used by the Gladio structure or by a similar structure.
We recall that Falcone himself was investigating Gladio in 1989, that is well before its existence had been revealed to the general public.
After the attack on Addaura, Falcone had spoken for the first time of 'very refined minds'. On this point Scarpinato added a further element: "With regard to the attack on Addaura on June 21, 1989, during the Rostagno murder trial, a highly secret document was acquired, dated June 10, 1989, destined to be destroyed, but of which someone had significantly kept a copy for himself, in which instructions were given for an operation attributable to Gladio with the use of means from the Scorpion Center which was to take place precisely in the area where the villa inhabited by Falcone was located ". In addition
to the document dated June 10, 1989, a second one, dated June 24, 1989. In the first (immediate destruction) the beginning of an exercise called "Domus Aurea" was authorized, which was to take place in the locality of Torre del Rotolo,a place near the Addaura and near the villa of Giovanni Falcone.
The Addaura attack will take place just three days later.
The second document, on the other hand, dates three days after the failed attack, and indicates in the same area the recovery of the material used in the "Demage Prince" exercise, specifically speaking of diving suits and "relative explosive material possibly left over from exercise".
In the newspaper " Il Giornale" it was specified that between the first and second document the name of the exercise changes: first it is "Domus Aurea", then "Demage Prince".
From the declassified archives of Gladio there is today further information which would seem to further confirm the genuineness of the message on the Gladio operation in front of the house of the: exactly that point, Torre del Rotolo, was considered a 'clandestine landing area' to be used for secret operations.
Falcone had already guessed that something else could be hidden behind "Stay Behind", above all for a curious center created in 1978 in Trapani, certainly not a focal point for a possible Soviet invasion.
" Giovanni Falcone - said Scarpinato - in the last years of his life focused his attention on the role of Gladio and the Scorpion Center of Trapani. He had developed the conviction that in some excellent political crimes a convergence of interests had taken place between the mafia power and external entities" .
"Entities made up of 'very refined minds' who, not surprisingly, had entered the field against him, joining the mafia, with the anonymous complaints of the so-called 'crow' prodromal to the Addaura attack, after he had taken the black trail to the Mattarella murder, which also had significant projections on the Bologna massacre. As can be seen from excerpts from his published diaries, based on what I myself saw as a direct witness his investigations into Gladio and political crimes were hampered by the chief prosecutor of the time, so much so that this was one of the decisive reasons that led him to leave the Palermo prosecutor's office by accepting the proposal from Martelli, Minister of Justice at the time, to move to the Ministry of Justice in Rome as director of criminal affairs". "Shortly before being killed, Falcone aimed to pick up the threads of that investigative track. The last time I saw him in Rome, in confiding in me that he was almost certain of being appointed National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor, he proposed that I go back to work with him, telling me that we could finally carry out the investigations that had hitherto prevented us". Source

: TPI

https://www.antimafiaduemila.com/ho...o-stay-behind-non-e-finita-nel-1990.html

Via D'Amelio, the judges: «The massacre was not only mafia-related. Borsellino's red diary stolen by a man from the institutions"

The trial for the misdirection ended with two prescriptions and an acquittal, but the reasons for the sentence clearly state that there was the "participation of subjects and power groups other than Cosa Nostra"

https://www.unionesarda.it/en/italy...a-man-from-the-institutionsquot-t2qyl2yk

The Stidda is a Sicilian & Maltese Mafia-type criminal organization and criminal society centered in the central-southern part of Sicily & Malta.

Years active 1980s-present
Territory Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Gela, Vittoria, Niscemi & Malta
Ethnicity Sicilians & Maltese
Membership 2,000~ full members

The Stidda remains the most deeply rooted gang in the territories of Vittoria, Comiso and Acate and has become a stable structure, while the rest of the Cosa Nostra present in the Ragusa area is closer to the influence of the Catania gangs.

The most representative clan of the Vittoria stidda is the Dominante-Carbonaro, which continues to be the clan of the greatest criminal caliber, despite the fact that in 2021 it was affected by the confiscation of assets for an estimated value of over 40 million euros.

The origin of the term Stidda comes from the "Madonna della stella", patron saint of the town of Barrafranca, in the province of Enna.

Pentiti
Salvatore Riggio
Giuseppe Croce Benvenuto
Gaetano Iannì
Claudio Carbonaro
Carlo Zichittella
Marco Iannì
Gioacchino Schembri
Orazio Vella
Salvatore Dominante
Simon Iannì

The Italian city of Busto Arsizio is located in the extreme south of the province of Varese on the border with the province of Milan. It is the largest city in the densely populated area between Milan and Varese.

"Gaddafi", the scams on Covid, the embrace with the Stidda. The 'Ndrangheta in the Manchester of Italy

If the current 'Ndrangheta is well identified, it is more difficult to trace its origins and arrival. The oral memory of enthusiasts of the subject speaks of a certain Mario Trifini, nicknamed Gaddafi due to his resemblance to the Libyan dictator, who arrived in these parts in the 1970s with measures of confinement and lieutenant of Luigi Vrenna known as "'u Zirru", an old mafia boss from the Crotone area . He would have been the one to affiliate the well-known names of the place that respond to the names of Vincenzo Rispoli, Mario Filippelli, Mario Murano . The urban legends of Busto Arsizio tell that Trifini wounded in a fire fight would have sewed up the wound by himself .
The coexistence between 'Ndrangheta and Stidda , the Gela mafia very present. The events of Trifini also tell of violent clashes with the Sicilians. Then a pax mafiosa must have taken over among the hegemonic groups. There are twenty thousand Gelesi in Busto , and such a vast presence has allowed the Stidda to take root, a ferocious Sicilian criminal organization autonomous from Cosa Nostra. Check for extortion and arson. Arms were to be sent from Busto Arsizio for an attack on Rosario Crocetta, at the time mayor of Gela and then governor of Sicily . There was no lack of deaths such as that of the Sicilian offender Domenico Scafidi body found the day before Christmas 2004 on a country road between Dairago and Bienate at the gates of Busto Arsizio. With a Skorpion 14 headshots and good night.

In Busto Arsizio there is also Cosa Nostra, the Rinzivillo clan

Yes they are also from Gela. Outside Italy the Gelesi have a strong presence in Cologne (Germany).

Ex PD Sicily deputy Ruggirello gets 12 yrs for Mafia
Probe into Messina Denaro supporters


(ANSA) - ROME, APR 12 - Former centre-left Democratic Party (PD) Sicilian regional deputy Paolo Ruggirello got 12 years in jail Wednesday for Mafia charges.
The Court of Trapani found Ruggirello guilty of external complicity in Mafia association.

Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA) prosecutor Gianluca De Leo, who had charged him with mafia association had asked for the politician to be sentenced to 20 years.
The investigation that led to the trial was coordinated by deputy prosecutor Paolo Guido and led to the imprisonment of 28 people, including lieutenants and associates of Cosa Nostra superboss Matteo Messina Denaro, captured in mid-January after 30 years on the run. (ANSA).

Arrested Laura Bonafede, the mistress teacher of the boss Messina Denaro
The woman is being investigated for personal aiding and abetting and procured non-compliance with the sentence, aggravated crimes for having facilitated the Cosa nostra

The Special Operational Grouping (Ros) of the Carabinieri, with the support, carried out a precautionary custody order in prison issued by the court of Palermo, at the request of the local anti-mafia and anti-terrorism district directorate, against Laura Bonafede, investigated for personal aiding and abetting and procured non-compliance with the sentence, aggravated crimes for having facilitated Cosa nostra.

As stated in a press release, the operation constitutes a continuation of the investigation which last January 16 allowed the Ros to capture the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro in Palermo and to arrest: in the flagrante delicto, Giovanni Salvatore Luppino for procured non-compliance of punishment and aiding and abetting aggravated by the mafia methods; Andrea Bonafede cl. 63 for participation in a mafia association; the doctor Alfonso Tumbarello for external competition in mafia association and other crimes also aggravated by mafia methods; Andrea Bonafede cl. 69 for procured non-compliance with punishment and aiding and abetting aggravated by mafia methods; Rosalia Messina Denaro, Matteo's sister, for participation in a mafia association; Emanuele Bonafede and Lorena Ninfa Lanceri, for procured non-compliance with the sentence and aiding and abetting aggravated by the mafia methods. Numerous searches are currently underway in the province of Trapani.

The prosecutor of Trapani on the arrests in prison: investigations not against, but to protect the Penitentiary Police
The PM: internal attitude of tolerance, if not camaraderie, without exercising the power of discipline over the prisoners. And to this are added corruptive episodes
by Giovanni Battista De Blasis April 14, 2023in Press Review
0

The Prosecutor of Trapani, Paci, speaks about tonight's arrests for corruption cases at the Trapani prison.

The investigations
“It was a long and in-depth investigation, born as a result of activities carried out by other judicial offices.
The inmates, speaking of the prison of Trapani, spoke of it as a 'tolerant' prison, with some members of the Penitentiary Police who were complacent towards the illegal activities inside the prison.
There is, among prisoners, a sort of 'prison tourism', on the basis of which information circulates about where it is best to be confined and why.
Here, Trapani was a very sought-after location”.

Organizational situation of the prison of Trapani below the standards
The information gathered by the Public Prosecutor's Office required an in-depth investigation, to see the validity of the rumors about the Trapani prison, and to understand who was behind the round of illegal material, who was the facilitator of these situations.
“The level of technology today is such that a prison must equip itself in a new way, to prevent the way crime operates” Paci points out.
“In Trapani, on the other hand, from the point of view of organization, the situation in the prison is below standard.
Whole parts of the boundary wall are not controlled, for example.

Internal attitude too tolerant and without discipline
And the internal attitude is one of tolerance, if not camaraderie, 'without exercising the power of discipline over the prisoners'.
Added to this are corruptive episodes, 'which make the situation dangerous, if not explosive.
And this is what we have ascertained in the investigations ”.

There are many confirmed episodes
There was, for example, the case of a subject who had to send mobile phones, the size of a one euro coin, with a soccer ball, knowing which part of the prison wall was not supervised. All with great tranquility.
The delivery was filmed by the cameras, but those placed by the prosecutor during the investigation, not the surveillance ones.
"In Trapani prison everyone knows that there is an area that is not supervised, and there is a gentleman who can calmly approach the prison, and he tries and tries again to send the ball until he succeeds" .
In addition to the micro-mobile phones, however, smartphones connected to the network were also circulating inside the Trapani prison.
There were also people who, inside the prison, called relatives to make inquiries"group calls".
Drones were also filmed that flew over the Trapani prison for a long time to deliver mobile phones.

Activity carried out not against the Penitentiary Police officers but for their protection
"The activity we have carried out - explains Paci - is not against the members of the Penitentiary Police, but to protect them, because the work of many is unfortunately soiled by the conduct of a few who allow themselves to be bribed".
There are two agents involved.
Others are under investigation.

Maxi seizure in Catania: two tons of cocaine found in the sea

https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/maxi-seizure-in-catania-two-tons-of-cocaine-found-in-the-sea/

Wow, that means that Cosa Nostra are still huge players.

Catania has for some years been a main hub for drug trafficking, including international ones, especially towards Malta

Mafia in Malta: Catania judge sentences 11 for trafficking drugs to Malta, Sicily

https://theshiftnews.com/2022/11/19...1-for-trafficking-drugs-to-malta-sicily/

It's one of the biggest busts ever in Italy. The operation recalls another huge seizure of cocaine carried out at the beginning of 2020 in Catania among the suspects the 33-year-old Mexican Jose Angel Rivera Zazueta, known by the name of "El flaco", considered by the investigators to be a drug collector in Colombia, believed to be very close to the Sinaloa cartel.

21 arrested in cocaine trafficking probe
Police seize 50 kg of the drug, worth over 4 million euros

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 18 - Finance police on Tuesday arrested 21 people on suspicion of criminal association and drug trafficking and drug dealing in relation to a probe into alleged trafficking of cocaine between the southern regions of Calabria and Sicily.
Police also seized around 50 kg of cocaine with an estimated market value of over 4 million euros.

Investigators believe the trafficking ring was led by two brothers belonging to the Villagrazia / Santa Maria di Gesù mafia clan in Palermo.
The preliminary investigations judge ordered the seizure of companies, real estate and movable assets belonging or linked to the suspects to a value of 1 million euros.

Salvatore Riina returns to Sicily, the scion of the “Capo dei Capi” is in Corleone

https://news.italy24.press/local/458341.html

The Sicilian mafia is looking for bosses

And the arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro has only a part to do with it: Cosa Nostra has been trying to reorganize itself and rebuild a management team for some time

One of the recurring questions after the arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro is who is in charge now in the Sicilian mafia. The answer is: probably none. In fact, at the moment there is no top-down structure with a boss who commands all the gangs on the island. It certainly does not mean that the mafia is not currently rooted in the territory, but that it no longer has the organizational structure it had at the time of the domination of the Corleonesi by Totò Riina . In practice, the commission, also known as the Cupola, no longer exists for some time.

In reality there were more than one commissions: the provincial ones and the inter-provincial one. The former represented the gangs, i.e. the organized groups of mafiosi, of the various provinces. In particular, the Palermo commission was important and dominant: the heads of districts of all the families were part of it. The district leaders are the elected representatives of three neighboring families which constitute the district. The interprovincial commission was instead the "regional" one, which included the Palermitans together with the representatives of the gangs of all the provinces.

All the commissions met in fact to ratify decisions already taken by the Corleonesi who, with the mafia war of the early 1980s, had eliminated the rival gangs. Totò Riina and the Corleonesi dominated the provincial commission of Palermo and had placed loyal representatives at the head of the other provincial commissions.

After Riina's arrest, that hierarchical structure no longer existed or if it did, in any case, it never reunited. The chief prosecutor of Palermo Maurizio De Lucia said in an interview with the Gazzetta del Sud : «The commission does not exist at the moment, it exists only in the formal constitution of Cosa Nostra. So much so that all the most recent investigations by the Palermo prosecutor's office show a constant attempt to reconstitute the top of Cosa Nostra and to reconstitute the commission. The skills of our investigators have meant that this project has not been successful.

It is also unlikely that Messina Denaro himself , however still very powerful, exercised command over all of Sicily. Still speaking with the Gazzetta del Sud , Maurizio De Lucia explained: «Matteo Messina Denaro is not the head of Cosa Nostra and he never was. He was a very important character in the mafia dynamics having been raised by Salvatore Riina, so he knows well not only the rules of the organization but also many of the secrets especially of the years 1992-1993, the years of the massacres. He is certainly the head of the province of Trapani, which is an economically important reality ». Furthermore, the top of the Cosa Nostra has never been commanded by someone who was not the head of the Palermo gangs.

In recent decades, the Sicilian mafia has been decimated by arrests: not only the bosses have been taken, but also hundreds of sub-chiefs or simple "soldiers". Cosa Nostra has long ceased to be the strongest criminal organization in Italy, because it was supplanted by the ' Ndrangheta , powerful throughout the world, established throughout Europe and South America, allied with the most important cartels of Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers.

Enzo Ciconte, one of the leading experts in Italy on the dynamics of large mafia organizations, explains: «In the 1990s, after the season of massacres, when the State responded powerfully at a military level by inflicting very hard blows on the Cosa Nostra, another phenomenon: the drug market has changed, from the large flow of heroin to the large flow of cocaine. The 'Ndrangheta took that train, while the Sicilian mafia was forced to play a secondary role».

Since then the mafia has tried to change its profile, presenting itself less and less as a military structure but increasingly entering the world of finance and business. «Telling the story of Messina Denaro», Ciconte continues, «everyone underlines his role in the heinous murders and massacres but hardly anyone has remembered that he was the person who built big business with the spread of wind power in Sicily. We must forget the mafia like Totò Riina or Bernardo Provenzano. The mafia is now the one that does business with companies in the North. It hasn't disappeared, it's transformed."

It is written in the second report of 2022 presented by the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate to parliament: «This increasingly silent and mercantilist mafia would therefore favor a collusive-corruptive modus operandi where business agreements are not stipulated as a result of threats or intimidation but are the result agreements based on mutual convenience".

Dia confirms "the constant inoperativeness of the provincial commission of Palermo" and explains that "the direction and elaboration of the operational lines of action are carried out mostly by elderly men of honor who have been detained or who have recently returned to freedom".

The names being mentioned in the newspapers these days as possible new mafia bosses are in fact all relatively elderly people. There is a lot of talk about Giovanni Motisi, known as u' pacchiuni (“chiattone”, plump), currently a fugitive and one of the Corleonesi's trusted killers. But he has always been, precisely, an executor of the military wing of Cosa Nostra, probably highly respected and feared but perhaps not able to represent the new mafia needs, that is, the more business ones. Another name that is mentioned is that of Stefano Fidanzati, an old boss whose family has been doing business in Milan for many years. He is over 70 years old. The younger is Giuseppe Auteri, 48, known as Vassoio, of the Palermo district of Porta Nuova. And then again Sandro Capizzi, of the clan of Santa Maria del Gesù.

According to Ciconte, the so-called "escaped" could also play a role. They are the losing mafiosi, those who in the 1980s were defeated by the Corleonesi during the mafia war and sought refuge above all in the United States. Some of them have close ties with the Gambinos, a historic Italian-American mafia family. In recent years they have returned to Sicily in dribs and drabs with the hope of resuming the role that Riina had taken from them. «Certainly there is», Ciconte continues, «that by addressing the “escaped” and old bosses, the gangs make it clear that they are looking for a reorganization. The mafia is still strong but, apart from the arrest of Messina Denaro, it has been trying to reorganize for some time. One could say that at this moment the Cosa Nostra has a problem with the ruling class».

Dia's report also underlines this, explaining: "This difficulty in reconstituting an authoritative leadership fueled by the continuous, incisive and pressing judicial repression with which the mafia organizations are hit inevitably determines a situation of uncertainty for the Cosa Nostra" .

In fact, the mafia, unlike the other major Italian criminal organizations, has always had a top-down structure. There has never been a leadership group that brought together, for example, all the clans of the Camorra, and the ' Ndrangheta is indeed strictly compartmentalized, divided into closed, often impenetrable 'ndrine.

Cosa Nostra, on the other hand, has historically always sought unified coordination, which is even more necessary today given that the gangs tend to act "under the radar". Another passage from the Dia report explains it well: «The mafia strategy is aimed at strengthening the interlocution with professionals and institutional environments which, abandoning the traditional recourse to cruel methods for the control of the territory, favor where possible the corruptive approach. The unscrupulous and violent action of the past has also given way to the need to adopt silent strategies of contamination and corruption».