Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has been on the lam since 1993, and Italian police have busted several of his close relatives who allegedly provided a “web of protection around the Cosa Nostra chief” as reported by ANSA: “the relatives are thought to have maintained contact with Messina Denaro . . . to help him run his crime syndicate based in the Sicilian city of Trapani and the surrounding province.”
Italian police say “that they have never been so close as they are now to capturing” Messina Denaro as reported by ANSA: “‘this is one of the most important operations,’ in recent anti-Mafia efforts, senior police official Mario Parente said.”
Assets worth $4 billion have been seized since 2009 from suspected associates of Messina Denaro as previously reported by Tom Kington for the Los Angeles Times: “police have ramped up seizures of businesses they believe are fronting for Messina Denaro,” and are hoping that he “could yet be betrayed by otherwise loyal entrepreneurs exasperated by the growing number of seizures of their bank accounts, properties and businesses.”
Messina Denaro has been convicted for, among other things, his role in murdering Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 13-year-old son of mobster-turned-informant Santino Di Matteo, who “was kept by abductors for nearly two years before being strangled and dissolved in acid in January 1996″ as reported by ANSA.
Filed under: Mafia, Organized Crime Tagged: Asset Seizure, Cosa Nostra, Giuseppe Di Matteo, Matteo Messina Denaro, Murder, Sicilian Mafia
