Copyright ITALIAN CARABINIERI PRESS OFFICE\/AFP\/File Handout<\/p>\n
Alexandria SAGE<\/p>\n
Italy said Thursday it was seizing more than 200 million euros ($232 million) in assets belonging to late Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro derived from drug trafficking and reinvested in Europe and beyond.<\/p>\n
The \u201cvast fortune\u201d of the ruthless Cosa Nostra boss \u2014 a legendary figure finally captured in 2023 in Palermo after three decades on the run \u2014 had been amassed since the 1980s, Italy\u2019s financial police said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Messina Denaro, head of Sicily\u2019s Castelvetrano clan who had six life sentences to his name, died in prison a few months after his arrest at age 61.<\/p>\n
The investigation by the Guardia di Finanza uncovered \u201cvast sums of money derived from drug trafficking reinvested in numerous European and non-European countries,\u201d police said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Assets were being seized in Andorra, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain and Switzerland, as well as Italy, police said.<\/p>\n
Drug money was \u201creintroduced into the legal economy\u201d through a wide range of assets, including luxury vacation resorts on Spain\u2019s Costa del Sol, bank accounts, securities portfolios and corporate holding companies, they said.<\/p>\n
Three people have been arrested in the probe.<\/p>\n
Italy\u2019s top anti-mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Melillo, hailed the operation as of \u201cgreat strategic importance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not simply a matter of identifying and seizing a significant portion of the illicit wealth accumulated over decades of related trafficking and parasitic exploitation of the territory \u2013- Sicily in particular -\u2013 from an organisation as powerful as the Cosa Nostra,\u201d Melillo said during a press conference in Palermo Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the operation also managed to \u201cdelay and hinder\u201d Cosa Nostra\u2019s attempt to rebuild its structure after the death of the powerful Messina Denaro, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police used planes, drones and thermal scanners in the investigation, the latter used \u201cto detect concealed spaces and hidden cavities,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The eight foreign companies identified during the probe were primarily used for real estate investments and assets management.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the 22 real estate properties found to be linked to Messina Denaro were \u201cgenuine luxury resorts located between Marbella, Benahavis and Puerto Banus, in some of the most exclusive areas of the Costa del Sol,\u201d police said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Living on the lam \u2013<\/p>\n
One of the most notorious bosses of Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in \u201cThe Godfather\u201d movies, Messina Denaro had a long string of crimes to his name.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of involvement in the 1992 high-profile murders of anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and for deadly bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993.<\/p>\n
One of his life sentences was for ordering the kidnapping and subsequent strangulation of the 12-year-old son of a witness in the Falcone case, whose body was then dissolved in acid.<\/p>\n
After disappearing in 1993, Messina Denaro managed to elude authorities for the next 30 years as the Italian state cracked down on the Sicilian mob.<\/p>\n
But he remained the top name on Italy\u2019s most-wanted list and increasingly became a figure of legend.<\/p>\n
It was his decision to seek treatment for cancer under a false name that led to his capture. He was arrested on January 16, 2023, when he visited a clinic in Palermo.<\/p>\n
He was found to have been staying near his hometown of Castelvetrano in western Sicily, his fugitive lifestyle facilitated by his sister and close confidantes.<\/p>\n
With their help, Messina Denaro also was able to continue to communicate with, and direct, his Mafia operatives. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Messina Denaro continued to receive cancer treatment while incarcerated at L\u2019Aquila, but he was later moved to hospital in August that year, under heavy security.<\/p>\n
He died on September 25, 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Copyright ITALIAN CARABINIERI PRESS OFFICE\/AFP\/File Handout Alexandria SAGE Italy said Thursday it was seizing more than 200 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[436,5,2855,5851],"class_list":["post-20290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-crime","tag-italy","tag-mafia","tag-offshore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}