Perfume, designer clothes of various brands and Viagra pills were found on Tuesday 17th in what Italian police say is the last hiding place Matteo Messina Denaro, head of the Sicilian Mafia Cosa Nostra, arrested on Monday. Investigators found no weapons.
Messina Denaro, 60 and known as the bloodthirsty kingpin, was arrested after 30 years on the run at a private hospital in Palermo where he was undergoing cancer treatment and is being held in the Italian city of L’Aquila. said the promoter of Palermo. He was transferred from Sicily on the day of his arrest.
The apartment searched on Tuesday is in a modest building near the center of Campobello di Mazara, a town of 10,000 people in the province of Trapani in western Sicily, ten kilometers from Castelvetrano, Messina Denaro’s hometown.
:quality(80)/cloudfrontuseast1.images.arcpublishing.com/estadao/RS45J2JXBVE2FC3TMZE6U4GBTY.jpg "Viagra, perfumes, cars, watches: what the police found in the hideout of the Cosa Nostra leader 3")
Mafia Cosa Nostra boss arrested in Italy and living a life of luxury Photo: EFE/EPA/CARABINERI
Police also found shoes, a full fridge and restaurant receipts, court sources said. “He had a normal life, he went to the supermarket,” said Judge Paolo Guido, one of the investigators in Messina Denaro.
Along with Viagra pills, investigators found several condoms, confirming the gangster’s wellknown passion for women. The authorities are investigating against the women he received.
Police inspected the twostory yellow building and entered the apartment where the boss was staying, according to images accessed by FrancePress agency. The small building was under constant police surveillance.
More about the boss of the Cosa Nostra
The gangster had been living in a renovated apartment for at least six months, “which proves the good financial situation of the fugitive. With refined highend furniture, but without luxury,” Trapani police commander Fabio Bottino revealed to the press.
“They conduct investigations, analyze biological traces, look for hiding places and places where they could hide documents. A job that will take several days,” he explained.
The mafia boss introduced himself to neighbors as Andrea Bonafede, had valid ID and said he was a doctor.
The last boss of Cosa Nostra, cruel and “invisible”, ran a multibillion dollar organization thanks to its ramifications in different sectors, from drug trafficking to real estate, wind energy and online gambling.
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Matteo Messina Denaro follows in the footsteps of historic Cosa Nostra bosses, Toto Riina and Bernard Provenzanowho died in prison in 2017 and 2016 respectively.
Leader of the new generation replacing former bosses, the “Prince of Trapani”, as he was also known, had a passion for luxury and gold watches. In fact, he was very well dressed and wore a watch valued at between €30,000 and €35,000, those responsible for his arrest said. According to the newspaper Il Messaqgero, thanks to his legal and illegal activities as a millionaire, he has a fortune of 4 billion euros.
“Now we will investigate this ‘mafia elite’ who protected him all these years,” Maurizio de Lucia, Palermo’s Attorney General, said during a news conference on Monday.
Investigations now focus on the network that kept him in silent hiding for 30 years, including the doctor responsible for his treatment, 70yearold Alfonso Tumbarello.
Many wonder if the boss will unveil the Sicilian Mafia’s darkest secrets, like the 1990s bombings that rocked Italy and changed the criminal organization forever.
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Matteo Messina Denaro, born in April 1962, was at the top of the Interior Ministry’s list of the six most wanted criminals in Italy.
In 2000 he was convicted in absentia of murder and in 2020 of assaulting antimafia judge Giovanni Falcone, assassinated in 1992 at the behest of the Cosa Nostra leadership. / AFP