Italy busts money-laundering ring tied to dead Mafia boss, seizes millions

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - ROME — Anti-mafia investigators in Italy have seized cash, companies and other assets worth more than €200 million ($232 million)in an operation they say targeted the network of notorious late Sicilian 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.

Announcing their results in Sicily on Thursday, investigators released a video showing masked police officers, some in riot gear, barging down doors and scaling walls to raid a series of vast luxury villas surrounded by palm tree-lined lawns.

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.

Messina Denaro spent three decades on the run until his arrest in 2023 as he left a clinic where he was being treated for cancer. He died in custody soon after.

Whilst a fugitive, he had been sentenced to life for multiple murders including the assassination of two anti-mafia prosecutors in 1992 in bomb attacks several weeks apart.

He was also convicted of kidnapping and killing the 12-year-old son of a mafia man-turned-informer. After two years in captivity, the child was strangled and his body dissolved in acid so it could never be found.

Police say their latest investigation follows some of the Cosa Nostra money trail. It spanned multiple countries including Spain and Switzerland as well as the Cayman Islands.

Three people have been arrested and eight firms identified, including real estate companies said to be tied to the illicit funds.

The head of the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor's Office, Giovanni Melillo, called the operation "strategically significant", not only because of the recovered cash.

"It also aims to prevent the reformation of a criminal organisation that existed until a few years ago," he told a news conference.

"Seizing this wealth means continuing the disintegration process [of the criminal group] and the process of re-establishing structures capable of projecting the full intimidating power and economic and social influence of the Cosa Nostra on a global scale."

Italy's finance police say their operation began with a report from Andorra on an Italian woman with "significant financial resources".

She turned out to be married to a drugs trafficker said to have close ties to the Cosa Nostra and to Messina Denaro himself.

The inquiry produced leads in several other countries.

In total, police say more than 150 officers were involved in a global operation which ranged from using drones and thermal scanners to search for hidden stashes of cash — to deploying IT experts to trace digital wallets and crypto currency.

Italian media are calling the haul "Denaro's drugs trove" although the amount recovered is thought to be only a fraction of the vast wealth of his network which has since been reinvested all over the world.