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Showing posts with label antimafia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antimafia. Show all posts

August 13, 2023

Thoughts on the confessions of Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro during his February interrogation

A man of many "pezzini"

As mentioned in an earlier ARCA blog post this week, Matteo Messina Denaro, the former fugutive Cosa Nostra boss, was interrogated on February 13, 2023 for almost two hours at a maximum security prison in Italy.  There, the crime boss fielded many  questions, and sometimes duelled with Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia and deputy prosecutor Paolo Guido when their questions struck too close to home.   

According to the official transcript of their exchange, which covers 69 printed pages and is marked in several places with the handwritten word “omissis”, (used to mark redactions in the interrogation), the Cosa Nostra boss, curated his words carefully.  In many cases he only only incriminated himself verbally in specific areas where there was already overwhelming evidence of specific and proven actions.  In other instances, he obliquely ignored questions he didn't want to answer, while seemingly going off on tangents, as if he wanted his say on key subjects to be memorialised so that others might read and interpret his statements later. 

Speaking to the two magistrates, Messino Denaro again distanced himself from the murder of Giuseppe Di Matteo.  Repeating what he had previously told investigating Judge Alfredo Montaldo, who had questioned him in relation to another trial in which he is accused of attempted extortion.  The boss admitted to prosecutors De Lucia and Guido that he played a role in the 12 year old's kidnapping on November 23, 1993 and made it clear that seizing the child was a volley designed to coerce the father, Cosa Nostra informant Santino Di Matteo, into retracting statements given to the Anti-Mafia District Directorate (DDA) of Palermo.

Giuseppe was escorted out of horse stables in Villabate by four mafiosi dressed as policemen.  His kidnappers had promised him that they were bringing him to see his father.  Once under their control, the child was held hostage for a total of 779 days in various locations between the provinces of Palermo, Trapani, and Agrigento.  

Ironically, at one point the boy was taken, hooded and locked in the trunk of a car, to a farmhouse in Campobello di Mazara, the same village where Messina Denaro was  found to be hiding at the time of his January 16, 2023 capture.  After years as a hostage, and increasingly becoming a liability to his captors, Giuseppe was strangled to death on January 11, 1996 in the Giambascio countryside outside Palermo. His body was then dissolved in acid. 

Matteo Messina Denaro was involved in the massacres of 1993,
including this one in Florence in via Georgofili

In July of this year, the Caltanissetta court of appeal confirmed Matteo Messina Denaro's life sentence for his role in dozens of murders including Giuseppe's.  The others include: 

  • The May 23, 1992 bombing which killed anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife, and three officers of their police escort as their cars passed near the small town of Capaci; 
  • The July 19, 1992 bombing in Via Mariano D'Amelio (Palermo) which killed Judge Paolo Borsellino and five members of his security detail; 
  • The 1993 bombings carried out at art and religious sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and injured 40 others: 

During his interrogation Matteo Messina Denaro denied being involved in the trafficking in drugs, but openly admitted to prosecutors other things they already knew and had confirmed, such as having regularly passed pizzinu (small piece of paper, containing sometimes coded messages) with convicted Cosa Nostra “boss of bosses” Bernardo Provenzano, who once headed the Mafia's powerful Clan dei Corleonesi. 

In these messages, sent while both men were already fugitives from justice, Messina Denaro admitted that the pair asked one another for favours, but his admission of his relation with Provenzano during this interrogation wasn't revelatory.  Investigators already had undeniable proof of the pair's communication in the form of ten pizzini, sent between 2003 and 2006, which agents had recovered in Provenzano's hideout when he was captured in Montagna dei Cavalli near Corleone on April 11, 2006. 

The Farm Hideout of Bernardo Provenzano

One of those messages is practically a testament of fealty by Messina Denaro to Provenzano and spoke with deference to the crime boss saying:

"Lei è sempre nel mio cuore e nei miei pensieri, se ha bisogno di qualcosa da me è superfluo dire che sono a sua completa disposizione e sempre lo sarò. La prego di stare sempre molto attento, le voglio troppo bene".  

In another, writing as his nephew "Alessio," Messina Denaro wrote to his Uncle Bernardo saying:

"I know the rules and I respect them, the proof that I know the rules and that I'm respecting lies precisely in the fact that I'm turning to you to fix this unpleasant affair, this for me is respecting the rules.  You tells me that money in life isn't everything and that there are good things that money doesn't can buy. I totally agree with you, because I have always thought that one can be a man without a lira and one can be full of money and be mud." 

Offering both a mundane and fascinating image of himself on the lam, a substantial part of the Corleonese godfather's interrogation statements focus on the time period in his life immediately leading up to his capture.  Perhaps because by this period he understood that the clock was ticking and understanding that a) he couldn't hide forever and b) he needed help from others given his declining health.  

Some of his statements appear to be attempts to exonerate some of those individuals, who have been arrested on suspicion of having helped the Cosa Nostra boss during his illness, including statements in defence of Doctor Alfonso Tumbarello, whom Messina Denaro told the magistrates: 

"knows nothing."

Other individuals close to the boos faired less well during the Messina Denaro's ramblings.  

When speaking about undergoing medical care in Palermo under the false name of Andrea Bonafede, as an outpatient at the multi-specilaity hospital La Maddalena, Messina Denaro described several of the steps he needed in order to obtain false identity documents, knowing that he could not undergo chemotherapy and medical treatment in the state's medical institution directly under his own name. 

In this part of the interview Messina Denaro stated:

"I had a friendship with Andrea Bonafede, but a remote friendship because his father worked for us, for my father and then my father was a friend of his uncle, he had a another uncle suspected mafia convicted of mafia".

Investigators contend that in addition to lending his name, Bonafede received 20,000 euros from the Matteo Messina Denaro to buy a house in western Sicily that would serve as one of the fugitive's hideouts.

Messina Denaro also told the magistrates about a second assumed identity, used in the city of Campobello di Mazara, the Sicilian town that sheltered him.  Here he was known under the pseudonym “Francesco”, a Palermitan man who purportedly relocated from the city to the smaller town while caring for his ailing mother and two elderly aunts.  

Living dual identities while hiding in plain site within the Campobello community, Messina Denaro also admitted that in addition to travelling back and forth to the Palermo hospital for treatment, either alone or with an escort, he had openly visited Campobello's bakeries, greengrocers, and supermarkets.  He also played poker and eat in  local restaurants. Again, nothing extremely revelatory, as receipts and objects found in his hiding places confirm some of the his admitted activities. 

What is more of interest to readers of ARCA's Art Crime blog were the from-the-horse's-mouth affirmations made during this hour and forty minute interrogation that confirm directly from the source that Matteo Messina Denaro's family, and that of his father, Francesco Messina Denaro, capo mandamento in Castelvetrano and head of the mafia commission of the Trapani region, sustained their livelihoods, to some extent, by the proceeds of antiquities crimes.

Messina Denaro's verbal admissions concretise a written statement previously attributed to him, which was already mentioned in an article published in 2009 by Rino Giacalone for Antimafia Duemila.  In that article, the journalist refers to an intercepted "pizzini" written by Messina Denaro where the crime boss wrote almost word for word, what he admitted to during this interrogation.  

"With the trafficking of works of art we support our family."

Francesco Messina Denaro as readers of ARCA's blog may recall was already believed to have been behind the theft of the famous Efebo of Selinunte, a 5th century BCE statue of Dionysius Iachos, stolen on October 30, 1962 and recovered in 1968 through the help of Rodolfo Siviero. 


Matteo Messina Denaro was verbose when speaking to his dead father's and the family's involvement in the illicit antiquities trade.  He also mentions that his family bought from everyone and laundered antiquities illegally removed from Sicily via Switzerland, in an enterprise which supporting some 30 members of his family, including some who were incarcerated and others like himself who were on the run.  But the boss was far more laconic when asked directly if he knew Castelvetrano ancient art dealer Gianfranco Becchina.  In response to the PM's query in this regard, he answered: 

"lo conosco perché è un paesano mio, a prescindere, anche senza i beni... i pezzi archeologici, lo conosco lo stesso,  perché siamo paesani."

In October 2018, following a formal request by the Deputy Prosecutor for the District Anti-Mafia Directorate Carlo Marzella, preliminary reexamination judge of of the Court of Palermo, Antonella Consiglio, dismissed the charge of mafia association against Becchina citing in her decision that the accusations used for the basis of the charge, made originally via testimonies given by verbose mafia defector Vincenzo Calcara, had been deemed "unreliable". 

Back in 1992, Calcara, and now deceased former drug dealer Rosario Spatola,  incriminated Gianfranco Becchina for alleged association with the Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano clans, implying that there was a gang affiliate active in Switzerland whose role it was to sell ancient artefacts originating from the mab's black market.  At the time of his testimony, much of Calcara's information was discounted as many were skeptical that he had actual knowledge of the facts he represented or whether he invented things for his own benefit.

Matteo Messina Denaro's statements during his February interrogation however confirm that a network of criminals funnelled numerous illicit antiquities from Sicily through the art market in Switzerland, which flowed onward, into world museums.  But the mafia boss stopped short however, on confirming, by name, whose hands, these works of ancient art passed through. 

Like Provenzano before him, Matteo Messina Denaro, at least for now, seems to be determined to be his own custodian of many secrets, especially those which might openly implicate living individuals, who have direct or indirect relationships with the Cosa boss and result in their arrest and/or convictions.  Facing a terminal illness, Messina Denaro's statements are well-guarded, and for the most part his scant confessions during the interrogation seem wholly performative.  

Like so many mobsters before him, it seems that he plans to carry most of the Cosa Nostra's bloody business dealings with him to his grave. 

By:  Lynda Albertson

August 10, 2023

So one particular (Sicilian) looting "mafia" was actually a Mafia.


Interrogated by Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia and deputy prosecutor Paolo Guido, shortly after his January 16th arrest by the Carabinieri del RosCosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro, A.K.A. "Diabolik", had a lot to say about the source of his family's wealth during his 30 years on the run.   

Filed by the Court's yesterday, the kingpin's first formal judicial interrogation after his arrest took place on February 13, 2023.  In the official transcript of this exchange, which covers 69 pages, some heavily marked with redactions, we learn interesting details regarding some of the 62 year old mafioso's conversations and admissions, both given and made during his hour and forty minute interrogation with the Court's magistrates last winter. 

In some of his documented statements, Matteo Messina Denaro appears to have been extremely blunt about what he was willing to admit to and what he was not, regarding critical aspects of his criminal life and life on the run, stating:

"Listen, there will be things I don't answer, things I answer and I'll explain why I'm answering, and things I'll explain why I don't want to answer ” , while “ if I'm lying and it's obvious that I'm lying, let me pass, it means that I do not want to answer."

During his interrogation, the crime boss, denied to prosecutors that he had ever profited from drug trafficking or that he had any involvement in the more than 50 murders of which he has already been convicted.  This despite the fact that in 2012, while still a fugitive at large, Matteo Messina Denaro was one of five people sentenced to life imprisonment, in part, for his role in the kidnap, torture, and murder of 12-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo. 

Di Matteo was the son of a mafia turncoat.  Held in captivity for 25 months before his murder,  according to Messina Denaro's reconstruction, he was just the instigator of the kidnapping of the child, and not responsible for his murder, though he admitted. "Listen, I'm not a saint..."

Denying that he was a Made Man, (a fully initiated member of the Mafia) Messina Denaro stated: "I feel like a man of honour but not as a mafioso. I know Cosa Nostra from the newspapers".   He also told the magistrates that he had evaded capture until January, in part by steering clear of technology because he saw its usage as a vulnerability, though this would become part of his undoing as his health worsened and he required the use of a mobile phone to stay in contact with the medical community. 

When discussing his life as a fugitive, using the name of Andrea Bonafede while hiding in plane sight in Campobello di Mazara, Massino Denaro told his judicial  interrogators that they had only captured him because he had been struck down with liver cancer and that this health related crisis required him to undergoing medical treatment at La Maddalena clinic.  Describing how he had been able to stay under the radar, he rationalised: 

"I followed an old Jewish saying, 'If you want to hide a tree, plant it in a forest."

But with worsening health, planting himself in the heart of the town while undergoing cancer therapies made the boss more visible. When asked about those who helped him remain hidden and with whom he had interacted while hiding in the Sicilian town, Denaro added "if you have to arrest all the people who had something to do with me in Campobello, I think you have to arrest two to three thousand people: that's what it's all about".

But while the Cosa Nostra boss denied his violent and drug-related crimes, during his interrogation he openly claimed that the Messino Denaro family supported itself through the buying and selling illicit artefacts, many of which were plundered from Selinunte, the rich and extensive ancient Greek city of Magna Graecia located in the territory of his home town of Castelvetrano, in southwest Sicily.

He told prosecutors that his father, Francesco Messina Denaro was an art dealer.  When asked if his father was a man of honor in the mafia sense he told the magistrates that he never asked him that question, then underscored "I hope that he had been, at least his life would have had meaning". 

Known as "Don Ciccio," Matteo Messina Denaro's father died as a fugitive, having been identified as the mafia boss who headed the Castelvetrano family from 1981 until 1998.  His father was a close ally to the Corleone faction loyalists led by Salvatore "Totò" Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.

Speaking further about his father's illicit ancient art involvement Messina Denaro was documented as admitting:

"My father didn't go digging in Selinunte though. At that time there were a thousand people and all of them, even the women, they dug at night. Those who didn't dig at night, dug during the day with the Superintendency of the State, but what else did they do (now maybe it can't be done anymore), that when with the axe they saw something coming out with their foot they covered it up and then at night they went back to it take it. 

In general, my father bought 100% of these things which were then sold in Switzerland and then arrived from Switzerland everywhere in Arabia in the United Arab Emirates, in America. We used to see things that passed through my father's in American museums, I don't know how they got there in museums but then it all started from Switzerland"

The crime boss also spoke knowledgeably about workshops of counterfeiters in Sicily, involved in the enhancement of Greek polychrome vases dug up by tomb-robbers who plundered the Hellenistic necropolis of Centuripe.  He explained to the Court's prosecutors that looters working in and around the province of Enna were known to add forged figural imagery to undecorated ancient vases, reburying them for several years in order to age their augmentation so that the terracotta vases brought higher prices when sold onward on the black market.  

Using a lekythos (a type of ancient Greek vessel used for storing oil) as his example, the Mafia boss stated that an ancient vase without a figure might be worth 2 to 3 million lire, while the object's value rose to 20-30 million or 40 million when the artefact depicted embellished imagery that passed as part of the original vase maker's artistry.   Messina Denaro also told the magistrates that in 1978 he found an ancient vase full of coins and spoke in a semi-informed way about how looters discovered and sold some of the ancient material in circulation via the Messino Denaro clan. 

He told the magistrates that silver coins could be found using metal detectors when coins were scattered on the ground but that finding vases required grave-robbers.  He also added that these graves also on occasion contained hoards of coins, often in excellent condition, having been buried with the tomb's occupants. 

He told the magistrates that his father had purchased seven such hoards, while an 8th was traded directly to dealers in Switzerland by the hoard's finder.  Messina Denaro admitted that in one such case, his father paid for one hoard of silver coins in instalments, as he didn't have the 800 million lire in his pocket that the finder was asking for the haul.  To obtain this grouping of coins, Francesco Messina Denaro wrote the seller a check for the entire amount, which was held as a guarantee by the finder and then torn up once the negotiated asking price had been paid in full. He stated that his father then broke up the hoard, selling it off piecemeal. 

While portions of Matteo Messina Denaro's interview imply that his life on the lam was financed by his father's illicit antiquities trade, rather than his own more serious and violent crimes, the unredacted portion of the interrogation does not appear to identify the Swiss-based receiver of the Cosa Nostra's looted ancient material which was laundered via Switzerland before ending up in museums.

Readers of ARCA's blog can make an educated guess who at least one of those traffickers might be, but we will have to wait to see what other reports come out in the days, weeks, and years to come.  One thing is for sure, the crime boss has ruled out repenting and in agreeing to answer questions, only admitted to what he could not deny. 

Suffering from cancer, Matteo Messina Denaro has remained under treatment in an Italian penitentiary since the day of his arrest where a room for chemotherapy has been set up for his required cancer treatment.  Several hours before a scheduled surgery, on August 8th he was transferred from prison to the San Salvatore hospital in L’Aquila, amidst tight security measures related to the 41bis regime where he was operated on for an obstruction “not closely related to cancer.”  According to the guarantor of prisoners in Abruzzo, Gianmarco Cifaldi the mafia boss is currently in intensive care as a standard precaution. 

Messina Denaro's defense council recently argued that his health conditions are not compatible with Italian law, Article 41-bis of the Prison Administration Act, also known as carcere duro ("hard prison regime"), arguing that he requires medical assistance 24 hours a day.  Cifaldi, however, reiterated that the right to health is already guaranteed through the use of qualified medical personnel, and that all state agencies are operating in compliance with the Italian Constitution.

Currently Article 41-bis of the Prison Administration Act is applied to people imprisoned for crimes such as mafia-type association under 416-bis (Associazione di tipo mafioso), drug trafficking, homicide, aggravated robbery and extortion, kidnapping, terrorism, and attempting to subvert the constitutional system. It is suspended only when a prisoner co-operates with the authorities, when a court annuls it, or when a prisoner dies.

By:  Lynda Albertson

January 17, 2023

Are there connections to Becchina enterprises? Questions surrounding the enterprise of Matteo Messina Denaro's fiancheggiatore, Giovanni Luppino

Police standing watch outside Messino Denaro's
residence in Campobello di Mazara

Following the arrest of fugitive mafia super boss Matteo Messina Denaro, there are some interesting avenues worth exploring regarding the diversification of mafia holdings. One of which may, or may not, strike close to home with regards to the  economic activities of 83-year-old former antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina in his later years.  Messina Denaro was captured yesterday after 30 years on the run.

Back in May 2022 Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, the country's anti-mafia investigation division, issued a confirmation confiscation decree on Gianfranco Becchina's property holdings, based upon a request from the Public Prosecutor's Office of Palermo.  As per that decree, the DIA's action finalised the confiscation of a significant portion of Becchina's movable, real estate and corporate assets "attributable to a well-known international trader of works of art art and artefacts of historical-archaeological value suspected of links with the mafia gangs, in particular in the province of Trapani." While the DIA's final seizure announcement didn't name Becchina as the businessman living in Castelvetrano, whose assets were seized, the regional and National newspapers did.   

But back to yesterday's arrest of the mafia crime boss

According to searches coordinated by the Deputy Prosecutor Paolo Guido, fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro had been staying, at least for the most recent period of his time on the run, at a residence located on a secluded street, Vicolo San Vito, in the heart of Campobello di Mazara.  This is the same town where his driver and fiancheggiatore (flanker), Giovanni Luppino, also resided.  Campobello di Mazara, in the province of Trapani, is a short 7.7 km from Castelvetrano where Gianfranco Becchina resides and where Messina Denaro was born in 1962 building an empire of Cosa Nostra controlled business enterprises which included waste disposal, wind energy, retail and agricultural sectors. 

A municipality in a strategic position, Campobello di Mazara is a town of 11 thousand inhabitants closely rooted to the mafia, with some residents in these days even lamenting his arrest, saying the Trapani cosca put food on the tables. The city is also home to Alfonso Tumbarello, the physician now under investigation for having treated Andrea Bonafede, alias Matteo Messina Denaro, who is also the doctor of the real Andrea Bonafede. Tumbarello, it is reported wrote prescriptions in Bonafede's name for the cosa nostra boss.

It is also home to mafia boss Francesco Luppino and loyalist Raffaele Urso, AKA Cinuzzo.  Wire interceptions confirmed that Luppino, arrested in September 2022, was in close contact with Messina Denaro for land management.  While Urso, the boss's ambassador to business in Italy's capital, was arrested in April 2018, and sentenced to 18 years and 4 months in prison for his involvement in the Trapani clan.  

Other interesting Campobello di Mazara residents include the former city councillor, Calogero Jonn Luppino, who had 6 million euros in assets seized for mafia association, including 10 companies and related business complexes, 6 parcels of land, 14 bank accounts, 1 motor vehicle, 1 racehorse, cash, and gold bars.  That Luppino was involved in mafia rackets and extortion which forced various businesses in the Trapani area to install gambling devices in their businesses or risk threatening retaliation.  

Even the city's former mayor Ciro Caravà, was indicted in 2012 for mafia association as part of the Campus Belli anti-mafia operation.  Following his arrest the Municipality was dissolved for mafia infiltration on July 27, 2012.  Strangely, after  Caravà's sentence was overturned and he was released from custody, he died by suffocation, at age 58, purportedly trying to swallow a piece of bread. 

All this to say that Campobello di Mazara is not your typical bucolic Sicilian town, making it not at all surprising that this boss was able to hide in plain site here. 

But who is Giovanni Luppino, aside from being Messina Denero's driver?  

This Luppino is not believed to be a relation to  Messina Denaro loyalist Franco Luppino.  Nor, it is claimed, is he a relation to an olive oil producer of the same name.  However, the driver, Giovanni Luppino also worked in the olive oil biz and reportedly had storage warehouses in Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano and worked with wholesalers buyers from the Bay of Naples as well as local growers of Nocellara del Belìce olives, a protected denomination of origin (PDO) olive varietal, consumed as table olives and used for the production of extra-virgin oil.

If this olive sounds familiar to ARCA's blog readers it is because Gianfranco Becchina also invested in this money-making olive.   Beginning in 1989, one of Becchina's companies produced his own Nocellara del Belìce olive oil, harvested from the olive trees on Tenuta Pignatelli, a one-hundred-acre expanse of olive groves and lemon trees with a historic main villa from the early 1800s on the outskirts of Castelvetrano, once owned by the Princess Pignatelli of Spain.  

Sold in upscale boutiques, Becchina's olive oil was marketed to USA-based customers for an eye-popping $36 a bottle and is known to have medalled in the New York International Olive Oil Competition over the course of three years, 2018, 2019, and 2021.  

Patrizia Messina Denaro - Sister of the Boss, and Capodonna representative of the Castelvetrano, family also had an olive-oil company belonging to her and her husband impounded.

Nocellara del Belìce olives are cultivated in a fertile area which encompasses the municipalities of Castelvetrano, Campobello di Mazara, Partanna, Poggioreale, Salaparuta and Santa Ninfa, all towns in the province subject to the heavy influence of the Trapani mandamento of the Cosa Nostra.  With some 5,000 olive growers who produce this kind of olive, the province of Trapani in the west of Sicily is a lucrative agricultural market, known for its mafia infiltration, as well as an important stop in the seasonal labor cycle, with the majority of harvesters being sub-Saharan Africans who are all too often exploited, treated as human farming tools, no different than tractors. 

Whether there is a connection between the mafia boss, his driver the olive oil merchant, or the former antiquities dealer has not been proven. But what is known is that in November 2017 Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, through the Court of Trapani's penal and preventive measures section, filed a seizure order for all movable assets, including real estate and corporate enterprises attributable to Gianfranco Becchina on the basis of an order issued from the District Attorney of Palermo based upon investigations conducted by Italy's anti-mafia DIA, under the coordination of the Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office.  That order resulted in the seizure of not only Becchina's cement trade business, Atlas Cements Ltd., Demetra srl., and Becchina & company srl., but also his olive oil venture, Olio Verde srl.   

Much like antiquities, olive oil is a highly lucrative and diversified, income stream making it appealing to Italy’s organised-crime syndicates

Police data shows that there is a known and profitable agromafia active in Italy related to olive cultivation.  Data also shows that all of Italy’s major crime syndicates — the Neapolitan Camorra, ’Ndrangheta, and Cosa Nostra have profited from  farming investments.  

The economic importance of agriculture for mafia organisations like Messina Denero's can be deduced from the frequency of ongoing trials and the confiscation sentences of agricultural, or agro-industrial assets, in and around the province of Trapani.  Many of which have been tied to trials and seizure orders relating to  individuals found to have been associated with Messina Denaro or his enterprises. 

With respect to olives specifically, it has long been the common view that the Neapolitans control the distribution of olives and the olive oil market in Sicily, via a price fixing of sorts, tacitly condoned, if not formally agreed upon, between the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra.  And studies have shown that members of both organised crime organisations have profited from the selling of counterfeit extra virgin olive oil, controlling farmlands, price fixing, and in some cases labor exploitation.   

How important, olive holdings are to the mechanisations of Messina Denaro's Trapani cosca has never been publicly disclosed. But we do know that this syndicate's reach extends beyond the underworld and into diversified revenue streams, like Italy’s illicit antiquities trade and the very path our food travels before reaching our supermarket trolleys and our dinner tables.  

And with margins as high as 700 percent, profits from olive oil are higher than cocaine — making it an appealing channel for money laundering. 

January 16, 2023

Having Eluded Capture for 30 Years - Matteo Messina Denaro, A.K.A. "Diabolik," has been captured.


Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia and with the deputy prosecutor Paolo Guido confirmed today that longtime fugitive, Cosa Nostra boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, A.K.A. "Diabolik," has been captured by anti-Mafia Carabinieri, this morning during the early hours.  He was arrested at a bar, adjacent to “La Maddalena” a private health clinic and hospital in the San Lorenzo, district of Palermo where he had been undergoing treatment.  The hospital is a medical-surgical level III facility for oncology. He's since been photographed being walked out of a  Carabinieri palazzo in dark glasses and an oversized coat, before being placed in a a waiting vehicle to transport him to a secure cell. 


Sentenced to life in prison in absentia in 1992, Messina Denaro solidified his position in the mafia following the arrests of two of his predecessors, Salvatore "Totò" Riina in 1993 and Bernardo Provenzano in 2006.  A fugitive since 1993, he had been convicted for the Sicilian mafia's bombing campaign in the early 1990s, which killed two anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino,  and others in Sicily, Rome and Florence.  

One of Cosa Nostra's more brutal bosses, he once boasted "I filled a cemetery all by myself." 

In 2012, while still on the lam, Matteo Messina Denaro was one of mafia members people given an additional sentence of life imprisonment, this time for the murder of 12 year old Giuseppe Di Matteo, dissolved in a barrel of acid.  Di Matteo's father, Santino Di Matteo, was one of the participants in the killing of Antimafia judge Giovanni Falcone on 23 May 1992.  After his arrest on 4 June 1993, he became a government witness – a pentito, a move which ultimately made his son a target.

According to Giovanni Brusca, an Italian mobster and former member of the Corleonesi clan, Matteo Messina Denaro was also the facilitator of the 1993 Uffizi gallery bombing in Florence.  During that incident, a Fiat car packed with 100kg of explosives detonated killing six people, and destroying three paintings - two by Bartolomeo Manfredi and one by the Gherardo delle Notti.  

Messina Denaro was also implicated in the bombing of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.  

While in hiding, his name has come up several times as linked to Gianfranco Becchina, where it was alleged [though never proven] that the disgraced antiquities dealer from Castelvetrano was involved in the clan boss's operations. Eventually the Court of Palermo dismissed the charges of mafia association against Becchina on the basis that the testimonies given by Vincenzo Calcara, an exMafia soldier and pentito (collaborator of justice) and now deceased former drug dealer Rosario Spatola, were deemed "unreliable" however the seizure of his business assets remained in effect. 


Messina Denaro is credited with having created Trapani branch of Cosa Nostra,  which infiltrated the economy, businesses and banks in the area.  Investigative seizures made by authorities in connection with this boss are so extensive it is hard to tell where the economy of western Sicily stops and Denaro’s mafia-controlled empire begins.  

As the word spread throughout Palermo of his arrest, officers received hugs and praise,  as cars throughout the city, blared their horns welcoming his arrest.


But those who have long lived in the shadow of the powerful clans, are worried that the apparently ailing mobster, now 60 years old, had already handed over the reigns to another, and may have gotten sloppy about where he was, or even perhaps let law enforcement in on his treatment.  With a police press conference scheduled for 17:00 CET, perhaps more will be discussed regarding his underlying medical condition, which some say is a tumour in his stomach that he was being treated for over an extended period of time, benefiting from the use of a false identity document.  

Will the medical issues of this crime boss affect his sentencing?  This remains to be explored. 


What is known is that he comes from a long blood line of mafia family members, some of whom are equally worth remembering. 

Francesco Messina Denaro - Capo Mandamento of the Castelvetrano family, and the head of the mafia commission of the Trapani region, died in hiding in 1998 while he too was a fugitive from justice.  It was after his father's death that Matteo Messina Denaro took over his father's enterprise.  A close ally to the Corleone faction led by Salvatore "Totò" Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, Francesco Messina Denaro was known as Don Ciccio, and headed the Castelvetrano family from 1981 until 1998.  
he was believed to have been behind the theft of the famous Efebo of Selinunte, a 5th century BCE statue of Dionysius Iachos, stolen on October 30, 1962 and recovered in 1968 through the help of Rodolfo Siviero.  Every year, since 1999, despite being on the run, his son managed to place a In Memoriam notice dedicated to him in the Giornale di Sicilia. Mysteriously, the purchaser of the ad is never traced.

Patrizia Messina Denaro - Is the sister of the former fugitive and is believed to have served as a Capodonna representative of the Castelvetrano family while living in that city.  Incarcerated, she is serving a 14 year and 6 months sentence for acting as stand in for her brother.  She was found guilty of being a full member of the Mafia and not an affiliate mafia. Several firms including an olive-oil company belonging to her and her husband were impounded and a number of bank accounts frozen.

Salvatore Messina Denaro was arrested on 15 March 2010, along with 18 others in operation "Golem 2" as a principal in a network surrounding his fugitive brother. Living in Campobello di Mazara, he was charged with organising Matteo Messina Denaro's secret correspondence in order to help him remain on the run, as well as mafia association, corruption and protection rackets.  In this case Palermo financial police in execution of three separate orders issued by the Prevention measures offices of the Palermo and Trapani Courts seized real estate holdings worth 1.8 million euros. 

Update 17 January 2020
The carabinieri ROS and the Palermo prosecutor's office have identified the hideout of where Matteo Messina Denaro, arrested on January 16 at the Maddalena clinic in Palermo, had apparently been hiding, for at least part of the last thirty years.    This residence is in the heart of Campobello di Mazara, (7.7 km from Castelvetrano), the same city where his driver and fiancheggiatore, Giovanni Luppino, is from.  Luppino himself is an olive merchant, who before yesterday was said to have a clean record. He is not believed to be a relation to Messina Denaro loyalist Franco Luppino.

What officers uncover in this house or other houses used by the boss and his facilitators, as well as in his phone, could prove  interesting. The fugitive boss, in addition to his own criminal history, is said to have  possibly held the Totò Riina archives, once held in a safe that was removed from Riina's hideout in via Bernini.  The documents in that safe might demonstrate a lot of the mafia's strategies during the Years of Lead. 

According to a news reports published by ANSA, Matteo Messina Denero's arrest came following leads which had been developed through a traditional policing investigation and not via an informant's leak of the crime boss' location yesterday.  Using the methodology of draining the lake around the fugitive; law enforcement worked to remove his network of low level and influential godfather loyalists charging as many of them as possible for aiding and abetting.  

Officers also tapped telephones including those of family and clan members thought to be co-involved.  It is from these wiretap interceptions that officers first learned of Messina Denero's illness, even if many of these recorded conversations were coded, as those under observation were aware that their phones were likely tapped. 

From there investigators began combing through health records from the Ministry of Health, focusing on male cancer patients, narrowing down the list of individuals who had or were undergoing treatment who were on/around the same age as Messina Denaro.  Among those, was an individual with the name "Andrea Bonafede." Which, aside from the irony of the last name, matches a known family relative, whose medical records indicated had purportedly undergone surgery at La Maddalena one year ago, to remove liver metastases that had formed from colon cancer. 

Following this lead it was determined that the real Andrea Bonafede was at his home on the purported day of this surgical intervention and with this lead a sting was arranged to coincide with one of the imposter's scheduled chemotherapy appointments, who had been using Bonafede's identity for scheduled treatments for the last year.  This resulted in the dramatic capture of Messina Denaro yesterday while he waited in the queue having done his COVID test prior to receiving treatment.  This while other patients were kept outside the facility, for hours, to allow officers to more readily identify the mafia boss when he arrived for his scheduled appointment time.


May 25, 2022

Justice Rendered: The final confiscation of properties and business enterprises of Gianfranco Becchina has been confirmed.

DIA Seizing Gianfranco Becchina assets in 2017

Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, the country's Anti-Mafia Investigation Department has issued a confirmation confiscation decree based upon a request from the Public Prosecutor's Office of Palermo.  As per this decree, this action finalises the 2017 confiscation of a significant portion of movable, real estate and corporate assets "attributable to a well-known international trader of works of art art and artefacts of historical-archaeological value" long suspected to have links with the Sicilian mafia, in and around the port town of Trapani. 

While the DIA's announcement didn't name the, now, 83 year old dealer living in Castelvetrano, the regional newspapers in Sicily, and the national newspaper in Rome, did. 

For decades the Trapani branch of the Cosa Nostra is believed to have accumulated at least some portions of its wealth through the proceeds of illicit archaeological finds.  Some of which, according to Italy's DIA may have been procured through grave robbers working at the isolated Archaeological Park of Selinunte, one of Sicily's great ancient Greek cities, located near Castelvetrano probably in the service of the Cosa Nostra.  This archaeological site covers some 40 hectares and includes Greek temples, ancient town walls, and the ruins of residential and commercial buildings from Italy's past.  Given its remote location, much of the site has not been formally excavated, and it has been prey to opportunistic looters for decades.

To further dismantle the mafia's operational funding in and around Trapani, in November 2017 Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, through the Court of Trapani's penal and preventive measures section, filed an initial seizure order for all movable assets, including real estate and corporate enterprises attributable to Gianfranco Becchina on the basis of an order issued from the District Attorney of Palermo based upon investigations conducted by the DIA, under the coordination of the Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office on the basis that much of Becchina's accumulated wealth was generated through the proceeds of trafficked antiquities. 

Palazzo dei Principi Tagliavia-Aragona-Pignatelli

The preliminary 2017 order included the seizure of Becchina's cement trade business, Atlas Cements Ltd., Olio Verde srl., his signature olive oil production company, Demetra srl., Becchina & company srl.  Real estate holdings confiscated included some 38 buildings as well as Becchina's portions of Palazzo dei Principi Tagliavia-Aragona-Pignatelli, once the noble residence of the family Tagliavia-Aragona-Pignatelli, which is part of the ancient Castello Bellumvider, (an additional part of this palazzo is owned by the city of Castelvetrano and houses the town hall).  Investigators also seized a total of 24 parcels of land belonging to Becchina, and four vehicles.  In total, the value of the seized assets is estimated to be worth more than 10 million euros. 

Giovanni Franco Becchina (b. 1939) was born in Sicily. In the 1970s, he established a business, Palladion Antike Kunst, in Basel, Switzerland, with his wife Ursula.  For almost forty years Becchina headed one of Italy's most notorious “cordata” (a trafficking cell) in a lucrative criminal enterprise that used gangs of tombaroli to loot carefully chosen and insufficiently guarded archaeological sites throughout southern Italy.

It is well-documented that Becchina and other traffickers like him, laundered their looted antiquities through exhibitions at museums and in private collections with manufactured provenance, providing a thin veneer of respectability to material removed from Italy and laundered through the ancient art market. 

In 2001, Becchina was arrested in Italy and charged with receiving stolen goods, illegally exporting goods, and conspiring to traffic goods. In May 2002, the Swiss and Italian authorities raided Palladion Antike Kunst and three of Becchina’s located storage facilities.  A fourth was raided in 2005. 

In 2011, Judge Rosalba Liso dismissed the charges of receiving stolen goods, illegally exporting goods, and conspiring to traffic goods, due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.  However, the Judge in the case confirmed the seizure order for the 5,919 antiquities Becchina had in stock at the time the 2002 and 2005 search warrants were executed.  Material evidence obtained during these seizures confirmed that Becchina bought antiquities directly from tombaroli. Over 90% came from a single source: convicted tombarolo (and later a capo squadra in his own right) Raffaele Monticelli.

October 24, 2018

Court of Palermo dismisses charges of mafia association against Gianfranco Becchina.


Following a formal request by the Deputy Prosecutor for the District Anti-Mafia Directorate  Carlo Marzella, preliminary reexamination judge of of the Court of Palermo, Antonella Consiglio, has dismissed the charge of mafia association against the Castelvetrano antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina.  In her decision, the judge cited that the accusations used for the basis of the charge, made via testimonies given by Vincenzo Calcara, an exMafia soldier and pentito (collaborator of justice), have been deemed "unreliable". 

The link from Matteo Messina Denaro to Gianfranco Becchina is said to begin with Denaro's father, Francesco Messina Denaro, who was the capo mandamento in Castelvetrano and the head of the mafia commission of the Trapani region. Francesco Messina Denaro was believed to have been behind the theft of the famous Efebo of Selinunte, a 5th century BCE statue of Dionysius Iachos, stolen on October 30, 1962 and recovered in 1968 through the help of Rodolfo Siviero,

Image Credit: Accademia degli incerti
The informant Calcara, who gave testimony against the art dealer, is a former protege of Francesco Messina Denaro of the Castelvetrano family and has faced his own legal dramas related to his involvement in international drug trafficking and money laundering, including underworld activities which purportedly also implicated the Vatican bank.  Verbose mafia defector Calcara's claims of self importance, and connections to the upper echelons of the mafia, have lethal overtones.  In the passed he has said he was originally tasked with killing antimafia Judge Paolo Borsellino in September 1991 with a sniper rifle but was arrested before he could carry out the plot.


Involved in the trafficking of weapons, drugs, and political corruption Calcara was once offered a place in the government's witness protection program but refused.  Later the Cosa Nostra determined his whereabouts and threatened his wife if she didn't get him to stop talking to authorities.  

Back in 1992, Calcara, and now deceased former drug dealer Rosario Spatola, incriminated Becchina for alleged association with the Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano clans implying that there was a gang affiliate active in Switzerland whose role was to excavate and sell ancient artefacts on the black market.  At the time of Spatola's testimony, much of his information was also discounted as many were skeptical that he had actual knowledge or whether he invented things for his own benefit.

To dismantle Denaro's operational funding, which authorities believe has helped him remain at large as a fugitive from justice, Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate (DIA), through the Court of Trapani's penal and preventive measures section, seized all movable assets related to Becchina in November 2017 including real estate and corporate enterprises on the basis of an order issued from the District Attorney of Palermo.  This included Becchina's cement trade business, Atlas Cements Ltd., Olio Verde srl., his olive oil production company, Demetra srl., Becchina & company srl., and Palazzo Pignatelli, once the noble residence of the family Tagliavia-Aragona-Pignatelli, which is part of the ancient Castello Bellumvider (the public part is owned by the city and houses the town hall).  Investigators also seized Becchina's land, vehicles and bank accounts.

What will happen with the seized properties and businesses remains a manner for the Preventive Measures Section of the Trapani court to decide but given his close ties with other incarcerated mafia affiliates, Becchina's story is not yet finished. 

In 1991 Sicilian building magnate Rosario Cascio became connected with Becchina's Atlas Cements Ltd., and took over as reference shareholder and director.  Before his incarceration, Cascio was a Mafia Associate to several bosses in multiple families including fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro with strong ties to the Castelvetrano family.   Known as the "cashier of Cosa Nostra." Cascio once had a hit put out on him by mobster Angelo Siino only to have Matteo Messina Denaro intervene on his behalf.  Cascio managed the family's economic activities and sub-contracts, and monopolized the concrete market and the sale of and construction equipment.  He also steered public contracts towards mafia businesses and managed an extortion racket which imposed sub contracts and labor.  

So, while there are no (longer) "reliable" statements proving Becchina is formally "affiliated" with the Castelvetrano organized crime family, his connections to other individuals who are or were, and the properties connected to joint operations with mafia collaborators, are still subject to judicial consideration.  

January 25, 2018

Murder, extortion, usury, drug trafficking, plus the plunder of art. Do you know whose hands your art collection has passed through?


While a single, somewhat less than attractive not likely ancient artifact, recovered during a police raid in Italy, might not garner as much attention in the English media as say, an Etruscan vase seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it still deserves a closer look.

The bust, pictured above, deserves attention because if you dig a bit deeper than just reading a short headline of it being confiscated yesterday along with cocaine, a semiautomatic Beretta and a Colt revolver, you can begin to understand a sliver of the dynamics that sometimes come into play on the darker side of the illicit art market. A place where transactions can sometimes be furthered by violent criminals, in complete juxtaposition to the well-manicured, suit and tie wearing, art dealers who later launder illicit objects through some of the art market's finer art galleries.

This marble bust was seized in the insalubrious quarter of Ostia Nuova, twenty-five minutes west of Rome.  The marble head of a child was recovered during search and seizure warrants carried out late yesterday evening and early this morning in which ultimately thirty-one individuals were arrested on suspicion of affiliation with the Spada organized crime family.  Each of the persons taken into custody will answer to possible charges governing the crime of mafia-type criminal association as defined by Article 416 bis in the Italian Criminal Code.  One suspect remained at large at the time this article was written.

Over the years, the area surrounding Ostia has become fertile ground for criminal activities of all types and the scene of bloody clashes between rival factions of mafia clans and local right-wing criminal gangs. In the face of competing criminal organizations, Italy's Carabinieri and the country's Guardia di Finanza have seen the underworld influence in the region ebb and flow, as one organized crime group replaces another, with each competing group vying for its own coastal territory in order to control political, drug, gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking or social housing rackets.

Speaking about the area where the marble bust was seized, organized crime author Roberto Saviano, who lives his life under police escort due to mafia threats, once spoke about Ostia saying  "[it] has now become like Corleone, like Scampìa: the domain territory of the clans."  A place where the influence of three families: Fasciani, Triassi and Spada have been pervasive in reshaping the power-balances between various Italian criminal organisations.

Locals in the community, who have lost faith in politics and institutions, often simply close their eyes to the blatant presence of organized crime in Ostia, either out of fear of retribution, or sadly, because they simply feel indifference.

In 2011 the trail of blood that bloodied Ostia escalated and newspapers recounted the story of the shocking daytime assassination of Francesco Antonini (Sorcanera), aged 45, and Giovanni Galleoni (Bafficchio), aged 42. Both men had been lieutenants affiliated with the Magliana gang and its also murdered boss, Paolo Frau.  Before being gunned down,  Antonini and Galleoni were incriminated in the managing of drug trafficking and laundering of illicit proceeds, activities conducted in the Ostia area in the shadow of close alliances with both Camorra and 'Ndrangheta, but in competition with the local Spada family.

In June 2017 Italian police made 21 arrests in connection to a drug trafficking ring tied to members of the Spada organization.  This network operated internationally bringing drugs into Italy through human mules and shipments arriving from Barcelona which fed the market in Ostia and Rome.  During these arrests, 700 kilos of hashish, marijuana and cocaine were seized, along with various caliber arms and ammunitions.

As law enforcement continued to step up its pressure on the clans, seven additional affiliates of the Spada organization were sentenced in October 2018 to a combined 56 years in jail for various offenses ranging from extortion to mafia association. Carmine Spada, the local family's boss, was sentenced to 10 years for extortion and mafia association.

Perhaps rattled by his brother's arrest, or with a sense of invincibility, Roberto Spada attacked RAI news journalist Daniel Piervincenzi on November 7, 2017 during an impromptu interview.  The assault was captured by news cameraman Edward Anselmi as the incident unfolded.  

Midway through his questioning regarding the city of Ostia and the Spada family's relationship with the neo-fascist populist group Casa Pound, Spada violently headbutted Piervincenzi breaking his nose and bloodying his face.  To his credit, Anselmi courageously continued filming and held tight to his camera while his journalistic partner was further battered by Spada with a truncheon as he tried to withdraw, while a second assailant violently tried to grab the cameraman's video camera as can be seen and heard in the graphic footage below. 


After the attack, journalist Piervincenzi spoke of the townspeople who had witnessed the assault as it unfolded but who remained silent due to a climate of fear, silence and intimidation.  One witness apparently even closed the blinds to his apartment to avoid having to acknowledge the act of aggression taking place outside his home.

Piervincenzi was so frightened by the incident that he and his cameraman drove all the way back to Rome instead of seeking immediate medical treatment for his broken nose at the nearby hospital in Ostia, saying: "We have been afraid. Staying there, at that time I was not sure. We were concerned that some member of the Spada family could reach us at the hospital and they could harm us and steal our camera with the video [footage] that we shot."  

Roberto Spada was arrested by police for the incident and charged with grievous bodily harm and domestic violence with the aggravating circumstance that he acted in a mafia environment. Both he and Carmine Spada have also just been implicated today as having direct involvement in the earlier murders of Antonini and Galleoni back in 2011.

But back to our looted or possibly stolen marble bust.

Yesterday's search and seizure took place in the sub quarter of Ostia Nuovo, where large public housing buildings alternate with crumbling infrastructure and drug-dealing street corners.  It is in this zone that law enforcement agents have made a concerted effort, to reduce the Spada family's influence, who have, until quite recently, controlled significant parts of the suburb's underworld economy.

In a series of raids by Carabinieri officers, which involved searches at multiple properties tied to, or controlled by, associates of the Spada family, law enforcement officers identified the 7.65 caliber semiautomatic pistol and a revolver in the basement of an Ostia Nuova condominium.  In addition to the two weapons, officers recovered doses of cocaine and a precision scale used for weighing narcotics hidden in a niche of the same building's elevator shaft.

The marble bust and a seperate marble inscription were found hidden under blankets inside a suspect's automobile. The owner of the car, is already on house arrest.

The marble head has now been sequestered while its authenticity is confirmed. The firearms will undergo ballistic comparison testing, to determine whether or not the weapons might be linked to past criminal actions.

By:  Lynda Albertson

November 17, 2017

A Sicilian Mafia Primer to Organized Crime Members with apparent ties to Gianfranco Becchina


This is a list of mafia-tied individuals and cooperating mafia-tied individuals authorities have stated have associations with, or who have made statements which directly implicated, Gianfranco Becchina for Cosa Nostra involvement. 

(Note:  This list is not complete and will be updated periodically as other names and details are released.)

Giovanni Brusca - Ex Capomafia of the San Giuseppe Jato family.  Incarcerated. Also known as "U' Verru" (in Sicilian) or Il Porco or Il Maiale, (In Italian: The Pig, The Swine) or lo scannacristiani (christian-slayer; in Italian dialects the word "christians" often stands in place of human beings). The information he provided regarding Becchina has not been made public though it appears to implicate Becchina with having had a relationship with Francesco Messina Denaro and fencing of antiquities.

Calculating and violent, Brusca is known to have tortured the 11-year-old son of a mafia turncoat or pentito to get him to retract statements made to the authorities in connection to the Capaci massacre.  After holding the boy hostage for 26 months, he strangled the child and dissolved his body in acid.  Brusca  once stated that he had killed "between 100 and 200" people with his own hands, but was unable to recall exactly how many murders he had participated in or ordered.

Brusca is also responsible for detonating 100 kilograms of TNT in 1992 under the highway between Palermo and the Punta Raisi airport in a bomb attack which murdered anti-Mafia magistrate and prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, Falcone's wife and five of his bodyguards. In 1993 Brusca mounted further bombing raids throughout mainland Italy hoping to intimidate politicians into reversing decrees for tougher jail regimes for incarcerated mafiosi. This wave of bombings in Florence, Milan and Rome left 10 people dead and injured 70 others.

Later, after his arrest, and through a series of strange accords, Brusca also turned informant, though much of his testimony has, at times, appeared to be self serving.  His testimony has afforded him controversial and exceptional treatment in direct contrast with his previous level of lethality. According to some of the testimony released, Messina Denaro was given the job of picking which paintings to target in the Florence bombing that ripped through a wing of the world famous Uffizi gallery because of his knowledge of art.    He is currently sentenced to life in prison.

Rosario Cascio - Mafia Associate to several bosses in multiple families including the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro of the Castelvetrano family.  Incarcerated.  A Sicilian building magnate known as the "cashier of Cosa Nostra." At one time had a hit put out on him by mobster Angelo Siino, only to have Matteo Messina Denaro intervene on his behalf.

Cascio managed the family's economic activities and sub-contracts, and monopolized the concrete market and the sale of and construction equipment.  Through these he steered public contracts towards mafia businesses and managed an extortion racket which imposed sub contracts and labor.  In 1991 Cascio became connected with Becchina's Atlas cements Ltd., and took over as reference shareholder and director.

Vincenzo Calcara - exMafia soldier of the Castelvetrano family and collaborator of justice. Former protege of Francesco Messina Denaro.  Previously involved in international drug trafficking and money laundering which purportedly implicated the Vatican bank.  Calcara was originally tasked to kill antimafia Judge Paolo Borsellino with a sniper rifle but was arrested before he could carry out the plot. Involved in the trafficking of weapons, drugs, and political corruption he was offered a place in the witness protection program but refused.  Later Cosa Nostra determined his whereabouts and threatened his wife if she didn't get him to stop talking to authorities.  In 1992 Calcara and Rosario Spatola incriminated Becchina for alleged association with the Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano clans implying that there was a gang affiliate active in Switzerland whose role was to excavate and sell ancient artefacts on the black market.

Lorenzo Cimarosa -  Mafia declarant and law enforcement collaborator. Deceased.  Cimarosa died as the result of cancer while under house arrest. He was married to a cousin of mob boss Matteo Messina Denaro. Cimarosa told authorities about a warning message Becchina received from the mob in January 2012.  In that incident, someone fired shots from a shotgun at Becchina's door and left an intimidating gift of flowers. Cimarosa told authorities that he had heard through Francesco Guttadauro, nephew of the boss of the Castelvetrano family, that the incident was ordered by Matteo Messina Denaro himself for non-delivery of payments.  Cimorosa indicated that between 70 and 80,000 euros were paid through Becchina regularly. After his death the site where Cimorasa was buried has subsequently vandalised, perhaps as a warning to his wife and son. 

Francesco Messina Denaro - Capo Mandamento of the Castelvetrano family.  Deceased.  Died in hiding in 1998 while a fugitive from justice.  Father to Matteo Messina Denaro who took over his father's enterprise.  Francesco, also known as Don Ciccio, headed up the Castelvetrano family from 1981 until 1998 and was a member of the Cupola (Mafia Commission) of the Trapani region from 1983 until his death in 1998.  He was a close ally to the Corleone faction led by Salvatore "Totò" Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.  Purportedly had ties to Becchina relating to the theft, looting, and laundering of antiquities. 

Matteo Messina Denaro - Boss of the Castelvetrano family. Also known as "Diabolik." Fugutive.  Solidified his position in the mafia following the arrests of two of his predecessors, Salvatore "Totò" Riina in 1993 and Bernardo Provenzano in 2006.  A fugitive since 1993, he has been convicted in absentia for the Sicilian mafia's bombing campaign in the early 1990s, which killed magistrates and bystanders in Sicily, Rome and Florence which killed ten people and injured 93 others.  He once boasted "I filled a cemetery all by myself." According to Giovanni Brusca, Matteo Messina Denaro was the facilitator of the 1993 Uffizi gallery bombing in Florence.  In that incident a Fiat car packed with 100kg of explosives detonated killing six people, and destroying three paintings - two by Bartolomeo Manfredi and one by the Gherardo delle Notti.  He was also implicated in the bombing of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.  Mafia informants have claimed that Becchina allegedly passed envelopes of money to Denaro's brother in law and sister. Investigative seizures made by authorities in connection with this Cosa Nostra boss are so extensive it is hard to tell where the economy of western Sicily stops and Denaro’s mafia-controlled empire begins.  

Patrizia Messina Denaro - Sister of fugitive Boss and Capodonna representative of the Castelvetrano family.  Incarcerated.  Serving a 14 year and 6 months sentence for acting as stand in Capo Donna for her brother.  She was found guilty of being a full member of the Mafia and not an affiliate mafia. Several firms including an olive-oil company belonging to her and her husband were impounded and a number of bank accounts frozen.

Francesco Geraci - Mafia associate to Boss of Bosses Salvatore "Totò" Riina of of the Catania Family.  Incarcerated. There are two Cosa Nostra affiliates in custody with this same name.  One is the nephew and one is son of a deceased capomafia of the mafia family of Chiusa Sclafani.  It is unclear at this time which is cooperating with authorities. 

Giuseppe Grigoli - Mafia associate to the Castelvetrano family and law enforcement collaborator. Incarcerated. Also known as "Grigg." Former owner of a chain of Despar supermarkets in Sicily, convicted of being the entrepreneurial arm of fugitive Messina Denaro’s organisation using his retail and distribution group to launder Matteo Messina Denaro's cash.  Told the PM of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Palermo that between 1999 and 2006 he was given envelopes filled with money by Becchina which were to be delivered to Vincenzo Panicola, the husband of Matteo Messina Denaro's sister Patrizia Messina Denaro. These exchanges were said to have taken place in the former offices of 6GDo, the distribution chain confiscated just at the time of his arrest. 

Concetto Mariano - Mafia Associate of the Cosa Nostra Marsala family and law enforcement collaborator. Incarcerated. Mariano began cooperating with justice officials two months after being arrested.  Implicated Becchina in a plot to steal and fence in Switzerland the bronze statue of the Dancing Satyr, attributed by scholars to Praxiteles housed at the Piazza Plebiscito Museum in Mazara del Vallo.

Vincenzo Panicola - Mafia associate. -Incarcerated.  Brother-in-Law of fugitive Castelvetrano boss, Matteo Messina Denaro. Husband of Patrizia Messina Denaro, sister of the boss.  Worked with mafia associate to the Castelvetrano family, Giuseppe Grigoli. Convicted in 2013 to ten years in prison. Several firms, including an olive-oil company belonging to him and his wife, were impounded and a number of bank accounts frozen.

Santo Sacco - Mafia associate - Incarcerated.  A former UIL trade unionist and city councillor for Castelvetrano, Sacco was  sentenced to 12 years for is affiliations with Matteo Messina Denaro in the control of various business activities, including alternative energy as well as activities in support of the families of mobsters incarcerated.  Wiretaps of conversations with Becchina show collusion towards vote fixing and influence peddling in support of the election campaigns of Giuseppe Marinello and Ludovico Corrao. 

Angelo Siino - Mafia associate to the San Giuseppe Jato family. Incarcerated.  Often referred to as Cosa Nostra's "ex-minister of public works".  A businessman who oversaw whose principal duties were to oversee mafia public sector affairs through the illegal acquisition of public work contracts. Siino would receive the lists of public contracts before they became publicised and through through threats and extortion, insure that these contracts would be awarded to mafia influence coalitions, thereby controlling the market for public contracts in Sicily.

Rosario Spatola - Law enforcement collaborator.  Deceased. A former drug dealer who passed information in the 1990s to Judge Paolo Borsellino on drug trafficking in Trapani area and the role of the clan led by Boss Francesco Messina Denaro.  Believed by some not to be a true member of Cosa Nostra as his father was a policeman making his membership void.  In 1992 Spatola and Vincenzo Calcara, incriminated Becchina for alleged association with the Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano clans implying that there was a gang affiliate active in Switzerland whose role was to excavate and sell ancient artefacts on the black market.  Much of his testimony has been discounted as many were skeptical that he had actual knowledge or invented things to his own benefit.

For more details on this case please see the following to blog posts here and here