Boss of Bosses
Page 31
Another insider says: ‘If they don’t stop the scappati coming back, there’s going to be another war. We live in very dangerous times. One side could be planning another massive crime against the state, to prove their strength.’ But before any massive crime could be carried out, police raided a farmhouse near Palermo and arrested Salvatore Lo Piccolo and his son. ‘I love you Dad!’ called out Sandro as they were bundled into squad cars.
In Lo Piccolo’s hideout police found a letter saying, ‘Uncle [Provenzano] agreed we should let them [the scappati] come back because that way we’d be in a much better position to see what they were up to.’
The capture of a Mafia boss does not mean the Mafia is defeated – or even that he is defeated. Lirio Abbate, reporter for the ANSA news agency in Palermo and author of a book on Bernardo Provenzano’s accomplices, was recently given police protection and left Palermo in a hurry. Police investigating the Brancaccio clan had listening devices planted in a mafioso’s house. While monitoring their conversations, they heard detailed discussions of Abbate’s movements and habits that could only mean Cosa Nostra was planning to kill him.
One of the first public figures to express support for the journalist was the president of the region, Salvatore Cuffaro, who at the time was on trial. After he was sentenced to five years for revealing official secrets, Cuffaro refused to step down until public protests and political pressure forced him to reisign.
Although Provenzano is in solitary confinement, with limited access to a very few individuals, others are still working on his behalf. In September 2007 Giuseppe Lipari, Provenzano’s consigliere and front man for many of his investments, was arrested, accused of Mafia association, after arranging the sale of property worth €3 million belonging to Provenzano. The magistrates claimed that Lipari’s work as business manager for Cosa Nostra had gone on uninterrupted for over twenty years.
Lipari had been released just two days after Provenzano’s arrest and had set to work straight away, trying to convert some of the Boss’s extensive property holdings into hard cash. On the day of his arrest officials confiscated papers, letters and notes from Provenzano’s cell in the Novara maximum-security prison, hoping to find documents relating to the sale. The former Boss, always an assiduous note-taker, would have accumulated a mass of paperwork to while away the hours in solitary confinement and will be quite bereft without it.
While there has been unprecedented international interest in Bernardo Provenzano’s arrest, it remains to be seen if anything has really changed. Grasso says that the culture in Sicily, even in Corleone, is changing. He claims that with Provenzano a figure of fear and oppression has been removed, and points to the fact that many young people from the Corleone area have been applying to work in farming co-operatives on land confiscated from the Mafia. ‘This means that Provenzano, while he was outside prison, inspired fear – not direct intimidation but an underlying fear that prevented them setting foot on Mafia property.’
On a hot July day in 2007 a bus load of Tuscan youths from a church group arrived in Corleone, full of excitement about spending time in the capital of organized crime. They had come to work for a fortnight in the fields and vineyards confiscated from the Mafia and to meet young people from the legendary Italian crime capital. They were full of missionary zeal, hoping to befriend young people from this benighted land and make a difference by offering solidarity.
They were staying in what used to be the Provenzano family home, a simple three-storey house where Provenzano’s mother lived until her death a few years ago. The house had been confiscated and turned over to a church group. While the students unpacked and talked excitedly about their expectations, Provenzano’s brother Salvatore drove up in his Fiat Panda and demanded that the Tuscan driver move his minibus. ‘I park here, it’s my right’, the old man muttered, and walked past the chattering students, heading for his house at the corner.
Grasso’s optimism may have been premature: one of the organizers of the youth group revealed that some of the vineyards confiscated from mafiosi had been expertly vandalized by an unknown hand. But Grasso is determined to stay positive: ‘We must continue to hope, to give the impression that we believe in what we’re doing’, he says. ‘We must show that we believe in this fight, which is the fight not just against organized crime, but for freedom, for the democratic future of a people that has been oppressed by the Mafia. We have got Provenzano, but when you cut off the lizard’s tail, it grows another one.’
In December 2007 Provenzano’s security status was increased after the authorities discovered that he had been communicating with other mafiosi inside the prison. Conditions in the maximum-security were already harsh, but the governor is taking no chances. Provenzano was banned for six months from further communication with the outside world and deprived of his television and radio. Signs that he was managing to get messages to Mafia associates were described as ‘exceedingly alarming’: they indicated that, with all the deprivations inflicted by several life sentences, Bernardo Provenzano is still the Boss of Bosses.
Sources and notes
For each chapter the reader will find here the main sources, and also endnotes where relevant or possibly of interest.
Introduction
My main sources on the last stages of the investigation leading up to the arrest of Provenzano were interviews with police chief Giuseppe Gualtieri, now based in Trapani but formerly head of the Palermo flying squad, and with one of his agents, code-named Bloodhound.
Much of my information for this chapter came from interviews with the following: assistant prosecutor Michele Prestipino, the driving force behind several investigations into Provenzano and his supporters, who was interviewed in Palermo; chief anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso, now based in Rome but formerly chief prosecutor in Palermo; Alfonso Sabella, formerly assistant anti-Mafia prosecutor in Palermo; Marzia Sabella, currently assistant prosecutor in Palermo; General Angiolo Pellegrini, a long-serving officer with the carabinieri, now retired; and historian Salvatore Lupo, who teaches at Palermo University, author of the definitive History of the Mafia.
The testimony of Nino Giuffré, Provenzano’s associate and former friend, provided the basis of this book. The witness statements reproduced in this chapter are from: the trial of Provenzano’s alleged moles, known as ‘Talpe’ (Michele Aiello and others), delivered on 8 March 2005; the trial of Provenzano’s supporters, Grande Mandamento, delivered on 9 February 2007; and the trial of Giuseppe Biondolillo and others, dated 16 October 2002.
I have also drawn on the following books: Il gioco grande, by Giuseppe Lo Bianco and Sandra Rizza, an account of the conspiracy theories behind Provenzano’s career and his arrest; and Il codice Provenzano, by Michele Prestipino and Salvo Palazzolo, based on the letters between Provenzano and his men. Bernardo Provenzano, il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra, by Salvo Palazzolo and Ernesto Oliva, contains a prologue by Umberto Santino, director of the Centro Siciliano di Documentazione Giuseppe Impastato, which lays bare the myths surrounding Provenzano’s status.
1
Saverio Lodato, Trent’ anni di Mafia, p. 558. Camilleri has since published a book based on Provenzano’s pizzini, called Voi non sapete (Mondadori, Milan, 2007).
2
La Repubblica (31 March 2006).
3
Michele Prestipino and Salvo Palazzolo, Il codice Provenzano.
Chapter 1: Corleone bandits
The most useful historical document of this period is Michele Navarra e la Mafia del Corleonese, by Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, a report on the criminal activities of Liggio and his clan, detailing the violent feud between Navarra and Liggio.
Legal documents
Tribunale di Palermo, sentence in the trial of Marcello dell’Utri and Gaetano Cinà, 11 December 2004.
Corte d’appello di Bari, sentence against Luciano Liggio and others, 24 September 1970.
I also draw on the following books: Nel segno della Mafia, by Marco Nese, a colourful biography of Lucian
o Liggio; Excellent Cadavers, by journalist Alessandro Stille, which gives a vivid account of the Corleonesi’s rise to power; Bernardo Provenzano: il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra, by Salvo Palazzolo and Ernesto Oliva, which uncovers some extraordinary documentation of Provenzano’s early career; Il codice Provenzano, by Michele Prestipino and Salvo Palazzolo; and Gli uomini del disonore, by Nino Calderone with Pino Arlacchi, which gives a vivid account of Provenzano and Riina’s early careers.
4
Pino Arlacchi, Gli uomini del disonore. The pentito was Catania boss Nino Calderone.
5
Salvatore Lupo, Storia delia Mafia, p. 201.
6
Ibid., p. 205. The mafioso was Rosario di Maggio.
Chapter 2: Palermo ambitions
The greatest documents of the historic ‘maxi-trial’ of 1986—7 are: L’atto d’accusa dei giudici di Palermo, edited by Corrado Stajano, a synthesis of the case against the more than 400 mafiosi; and Excellent Cadavers, by Alessandro Stille, which gives the inside story of the investigations leading up to the trial. Mafia Business, by Pino Arlacchi, builds up a picture of how Cosa Nostra constructed its financial empire.
This chapter draws on author interviews with the historian Salvatore Lupo, assistant prosecutor Alfonso Sabella and chief anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso.
I also draw on the following: John Dickie, Cosa Nostra; Saverio Lodato, Trent’ anni di Mafia; Salvatore Lupo, Storia delia Mafia; Michele Prestipino and Salvo Palazzolo, Il codice Provenzano; Lirio Abbate and Peter Gomez, I complici; Giovanni Brusca, interviewed by Saverio Lodato, Ho ucciso Giovanni Falcone; and Salvo Palazzolo and Ernesto Oliva, Bernardo Provenzano: il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra.
7
Tullio Pironti, La vera storia d’Italia, p. 833. The collaborator was Dr Gioacchino Pennino.
8
Michele Prestipino and Salvo Palazzolo, Il codice Provenzano, p. 68. The mafioso was Carmelo Amato.
9
Sentence against Marcello dell’ Utri. The collaborator was Altofonte boss Francesco Di Carlo.
10
Alessandro Stille, Excellent Cadavers, p. 82. The insider was the drug trafficker Bou Ghebel Ghassan, who was arrested for providing morphine base to the Greco family.
Chapter 3: Love and title deeds
Background descriptions of the Palazzolo family status in Cinisi are based on an author interview with Giovanni Impastato, who grew up with a mafioso father.
Palazzolo and Oliva, Bernardo Provenzano: il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra, gives a detailed account of how Provenzano built up an illegal empire using front-men and -women to cover his tracks. Also useful for background was Enrico Bellavia and Silvana Mazzocchi, Iddu. The position and status of women is described in: Liliana Madeo, Donne di Mafia, Teresa Principato and Alessandra Dino, Mafia Donna; and Clare Longrigg, Mafia Women (Chatto & Windus, London, 1997).
Legal documents
Tribunale di Palermo, testimony of Giovanni Brusca in the trial of Simone Castello and others, 12 December 2000.
Report by the Partinico company of carabinieri, 27 November 1983, in the trial of Bernardo Provenzano and eighteen others.
Tribunale di Palermo, fifth session, evidence admitted in the trial of Filippa La Fiura, Saveria Palazzolo and others. The sentence was given on 18 December 1990.
11
Ordinanza di custodia cautelare emessa dal gip di Palermo nell’ ambito dell’ inchiesta Grande Oriente, 6 November 1998.
Chapter 4: Bagheria’s feudal lord
Much of the detailed information on Provenzano’s business dealings comes from an interview with General Angiolo Pellegrini, who investigated Provenzano’s activities in the early 1980s. Another rich source on the early days in Bagheria was the testimony of Nino Giuffré in the trial of Giuseppe Biondolillo and others, before the court of Termini Imerese (temporarily relocated to Padua’s maximum-security facility), 16 October 2002.
Legal documents
Procura di Palermo, deposition of the collaborator Angelo Siino, known as the Mafia’s ‘minister of works’, 10 June 1998.
Report on the collaboration between mafioso Gino Ilardo and Colonel Michele Riccio of the carabinieri special organized crime division (Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, or ROS), Rome, 30 July 1996.
Tribunale di Palermo: examination of Nino Giuffré in the trial of Michele Aiello and others known as Talpe (‘Moles’), Milan, 8—9 March 2005.
Tribunale di Palermo: judicial report no 3033/16 1983 in the case of Gariffo Carmelo and twenty-nine others.
Also cited are: Palazzolo and Oliva, Bernardo Provenzano: il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra; Prestipino and Palazzolo, Il codice Provenzano; and Stille, Excellent Cadavers.
12
This description was given by the collaborator Gino Ilardo to Colonel Michele Riccio of the carabinieri special organized crime division.
Chapter 5: The split
My most valuable source for this and the following chapter is assistant prosecutor Alfonso Sabella, who was at the centre of an extraordinary series of investigations in Palermo throughout the 1990s. Sabella was instrumental in the collaboration of Giovanni Brusca, whose testimony in the trial of Simone Castello and five others, dated 12 December 2000, is the other principal source.
Legal documents
Also important is Nino Giuffré’s testimony in the trial of Giuseppe Biondolillo and others, before the court of Termini Imerese, 16 October 2002.
The Mafia collaborator Salvatore Cancemi’s testimony was reported in the arrest warrants for those responsible for the murder of judge Falcone, his wife and escort, issued by the Procura distrettuale antimafia di Caltanissetta.
Trial of Simone Castello and five others, Tribunale di Palermo, deposition of Salvatore Barbagallo, 11 December 2000.
The extraordinary revelations of supergrass Tommaso Buscetta are contained in La Mafia ha vinto, by Sicilian journalist Saverio Lodato. Other revelations by collaborators about the relationship between Riina and Provenzano are contained in: Palazzolo and Oliva, Bernardo Provenzano: il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra; Giovanni Brusca, interviewed by Saverio Lodato, Ho ucciso Giovanni Falcone; Alessandro Stille, Excellent Cadavers; Sandra Rizza and Giuseppe Lo Bianco, Il gioco grande; Lirio Abbate and Peter Gomez, I complici; and Prestipino and Palazzolo, Il codice Provenzano.
13
Carnevale was suspended for five years, but was eventually acquitted of any wrongdoing.
14
Prestipino and Palazzolo, Il codice Provenzano, p. 138. The mafioso was Ino Corso.
15
Trial of Simone Castello and five others, Tribunale di Palermo. The mafioso was Salvatore Barbagallo.
Chapter 6: Family matters
The details of Saveria Palazzolo’s move to Corleone, and her life there, are based on author interviews with the former mayor of Corleone, Pippo Cipriani, and with Provenzano’s lawyers past and present, as well as police on surveillance duty. I have also drawn on details contained in Palazzolo and Oliva, Bernardo Provenzano: il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra.
Provenzano’s sons spoke to the BBC in an interview broadcast in September 2007 (The Real Godfather). Details of Provenzano’s sons’ lives, and their conversations secretly recorded by the police, are reported in Abbate and Gomez, I complici.
Giovanni Brusca and Tommaso Buscetta’s interpretations of the family’s return to Corleone are contained in Saverio Lodato’s interviews (Ho ucciso Giovanni Falcone and La Mafia ha vinto).
Lipari’s correspondence with Provenzano about his sons’ careers is taken from Palazzolo and Bellavia, Voglia di Mafia (Carocci, Rome, 2005).
The full story of Provenzano’s consigliere Pino Lipari and his unfortunate family is given in Prestipino and Palazzolo, Il codice Provenzano. The story of the Provenzano family Christmas in Germany is drawn from an account in Enrico Bellavia and Silvana Mazzocchi, Iddu. Further details of the mafiosi’s disaffection with Riina’s excesses are contained in Alessandro Stille, Excellent Cadavers.
16
17
Letter from Lipari to Bernardo Provenzano, cited in Abbate and Gomez, I complici, p. 282.
18
Conversation between Angelo and Paolo Francesco recorded by police investigators on 28 September 2005, quoted in Abbate and Gomez, I complici.
Chapter 7: Goodbye Totò
The analysis and background of Provenzano’s position in the lead-up to the murder of judge Falcone are based on an author interview with assistant prosecutor Nino Di Matteo in Palermo. The account of the plot to murder the anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso is based on an author interview with Dr Grasso.
Much of the description of the dynamic between Riina and Provenzano in the lead-up to Riina’s arrest, including the detail of meetings to discuss strategy, comes from the testimony of Nino Giuffré. This chapter draws on testimony given on 14 May 2003 to the judges of the Palermo court of assizes, during the trial, named ‘Golden Market’, of Riina and members of the commission of Cosa Nostra. Giuffré also described the threat Falcone’s investigations posed to Cosa Nostra.