By Angelo Amante
ROME, May 28 (Reuters) - Italy’s finance police on Thursday said they had seized assets and companies worth more than €200 million ($232 million) in an investigation into the laundering of drug trafficking proceeds linked to late mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro.
Messina Denaro was arrested in 2023 after spending 30 years on the run for his role in the Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia’s war against the state between the 1980s and 1990s, which included the killing of top prosecutor Giovanni Falcone.
Nicknamed “U Siccu” (the skinny one), Messina Denaro died of cancer a few months after his arrest, leaving prosecutors with the task of tracking down the proceeds of his criminal empire and those who helped him evade justice.
Police said the operation capped a complex investigation that traced a vast pool of assets generated by the reinvestment of drug trafficking proceeds accumulated since the 1980s across multiple European and non-European countries.
“We believe we have identified a significant portion of the investments made by the mafia, including abroad,” Palermo chief prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said.
GOLD AND LUXURY PROPERTIES
The son of a mafia boss, Messina Denaro came from the western Sicilian town of Castelvetrano, near Trapani, and headed the local Cosa Nostra clan.
Closely linked to powerful boss Salvatore “Toto” Riina, he played a role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan that killed 10 people in 1993 and was believed to be responsible for numerous murders in the 1990s.
Three people were arrested in the investigation, which involved locations including Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands but centred on Andorra, the small principality in the Pyrenees.
Police said they tracked funds there to a woman from Campobello di Mazara, the Sicilian town where Messina Denaro had his final hideout, who had been married to a man with a history of drug offences.
“Based on these findings, investigators came to suspect that the funds in Andorra were linked to drug trafficking,” the statement said.
Prosecutors identified eight companies tied to the money laundering network - five in Spain, two in Gibraltar and one in the Cayman Islands. The group owned a “very significant” stake in a Lebanese bank, as well as gold and luxury real estate.
Giovanni Melillo, Italy’s national anti-mafia prosecutor, said it was crucial to target the mob’s wealth.
“(It) means continuing the dismantling process needed to prevent the emergence of structures once again capable of projecting, on a global scale, Cosa Nostra’s full intimidating power and economic influence.”
($1 = 0.8615 euros)
(Reporting by Angelo Amante; Editing by Crispian Balmer and David Holmes)
