Cosa nostra after Riina: the return from America of the old mobsters PRINTDetails Published: 13 February 2020
by Salvo Palazzolo After the death of the boss, the loyalists of Totò Riina and the "losers" who returned from American exile inaugurated the season of "broad agreements": the second Mafia Republic. They tried to reform the dome, but were stopped. What will they do now? Where were the treasures of the old mafia invested?
“The Inzerillos? Good people, â€says an old man in front of the church of San Giuseppe. "They have always done good, once and now that they are back." Perhaps this is why they have been looking for them from all over Palermo in recent months. Mafiosi and uncensored. And it is not yet clear why, despite the blitz of the Palermo prosecutor's office, the mobile team and the central operational service of the police which in July 2019 took place between Sicily and New York (in the context of the "New Connection" investigation, ed.)
The answer must be sought beyond the Madonnina which stands in front of the church of Passo di Rigano, a neighborhood on the south-eastern outskirts: here it is, via Castellana, it seems to have become the gateway to Palermo's return to the past. They were in via Castellana forty years ago, when Salvatore "Totuccio" Inzerillo was one of the kings of the city: the family had a lot of money (at the time from drug trafficking with the United States) and made billionaire investments in construction. Now that Totò Riina is dead and the American exile imposed on the survivors after the murder of Totuccio in 1981 is over, the Inzerillos have returned to via Castellana. With their assets never seized and a respectable judicial curriculum. They are back and they are no longer the "losers" banned by Cosa Nostra, but neither do they build more buildings. Officially they are model citizens. But many continue to look for them. And they are not only looking for the Inzerillos, but also for relatives and friends: the Gambino, the Spatola, the Mannino, the Sirchia, the Buscemi. They are back too. The protagonists of the first big investigation by the then investigating judge Giovanni Falcone for what later became the "Spatula trial". It was 1980. What is going on today between the Auditor, Passo di Rigano, Boccadifalco and Torretta? Torretta is the only town that is part of a "mandate" of the city, it seemed a story now passed, that told by the repentant Tommaso Buscetta. They have returned from the United States, but they often return to visit relatives and friends. Are they just pleasure visits? Or do you still travel a lot of money on the New York-Palermo axis?
To try to understand you have to walk along via Castellana, beyond the Madonnina, the door of Palermo's return to the past. At number 81 there is a well-established shop of paper products, the "Karton Plastik" of Mrs. Olimpia Caruso, the wife of Francesco Inzerillo, the brother of Totuccio who is nicknamed the truttaturi. He is a horse racing enthusiast: he had been arrested in 2006, but then the Cassation had acquitted him from the charge of mafia, sweeping away the sentence on appeal. Inzerillo u truttaturi was re-arrested in the blitz of July: Settimo Mineo, the elderly boss of Corso Calatafimi who, after being released from prison, the carabinieri of the investigative team were keeping an eye on why he was reorganizing the Cupola of Cosa Nostra. Four visits, between 6 March 2017 and 25 May 2018, four days before the summit of the reconstituted provincial commission of Palermo. Meetings that changed the history of Cosa Nostra Siciliana: Mineo, a loyalist of Riina, wanted to sign a peace with the "losers" of the past. Four visits that ended a long season of hatred and revenge. And they inaugurated the season of "broad agreements", the second Mafia Republic.
Today, the protagonists of the turning point are in prison, the Palermo prosecutor has arrested the protagonists of the reorganization (with the operation "Cupola 2.0" of December 4, 2018, ed.). But the mysteries of the old mafia still remain in the bowels of Palermo. Where were the treasures of the old mafia invested? What do prisoners released from prison do? A monitoring ordered by the prefect of Palermo Antonella De Miro has revealed 300 prisoners in western Sicily: they will no longer have teams of killers available, but they are equally dangerous for the secrets of the past that they preserve. On unidentified assets, on relationships never discovered in the world of economics and politics. Those secrets are the strength of the Sicilian mafia.
"Follow the money" between drug trafficking and money laundering Where to start again? "Follow the money," said Falcone. Already Commissioner Boris Giuliano had discovered that Inzerillo had returned from the United States in 1973 and that he had become one of the protagonists of the international drug trade. When in the early eighties the commissioner Ninni Cassarà and Falcone resume the investigation they realize that the mafia is also one of the entrepreneurs who built half Palermo with the group "Spatola-Gambino-Inzerillo". But Inzerillo is also a Freemason, nobody knows this at the time, and he also has intense economic relations in Milan for his investments. Business that he shared with the other powerful Palermo, Stefano Bontate, killed nineteen days earlier.
Cassarà works on those phone numbers, but he won't come to decipher the mystery of the accounts. In Switzerland he goes with Falcone a month before being killed, in the terrible summer of 1985. When he returns he sends documents for a letter rogatory, but the envelope will arrive open, lightened by some papers. The investigations were trying to tighten up Vito Roberto Palazzolo, one of the managers who had laundered the money of international drug trafficking. Palazzolo recently finished serving his sentence for mafia association and has left for abroad. With its secrets. Palermo's past has already returned to current events.
From Colombian narcos to Malta's servers Many of the freed mafia members immediately went to work. The main business is that of drug trafficking, as has not happened in years. The ambassadors of Colombian narcos have returned to Palermo who seemed to have lost confidence in the Sicilians, weakened by kidnappings that had limited the organization's liquidity. What happens instead now? The kidnappings continued, but the old bosses have got away with it to date and have restarted the cocaine network. Like the online betting network on servers in Malta. It is the Mafia 2.0 that in the name of business traces new alliances and not only within the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. (January 30, 2020)
