250 mn of Messina Denaro's treasure seized so far

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 23 - Italian police on Thursday said they had so far seized 250 million euro of the treasure trove of assets left by late Cosa Nostra superboss Matteo Messina Denaro.
    "So far, a good 250 million have been seized, including companies, securities, real estate, and cash referable to Matteo Messina Denaro", said ROS special branch commander Vincenzo Molinese in Palermo, speaking at the ceremonies for the 32nd anniversary of the Capaci massacre in which Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards were killed by a Mafia bomb in 1992.
    "The mafia succeeds in polluting civil society. Cosa Nostra's strength lies outside the organisation: it manages to penetrate among professionals, institutions is its peculiarity," he added.
    "The great results in the fight against the mafia create disorientation in mafia organisations," he said.
    Messina Denaro was caught in mid-January last year after 30 years on the run while leaving a clinic where he was being treated for cancer in Palermo.
    He died in a hospital in L'Aquila on September 25 aged 62.
    Messina Denaro had been convicted for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 Cosa Nostra bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
    He was also convicted of the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt 40 more in 1993.
    Long idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and playboy-like charisma,, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months-pregnant girlfriend.
    The boss, who reportedly enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those he had killed.
    He was reportedly helped dodge police by a "middle class Mafia", not only around his fief at Trapani but also around Sicily, Italian police have said. (ANSA).