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.
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