Veteran mafia bosses in Sicily, fearing new recruits lack a code of honour, have been urging them to watch The Godfather to learn the trade, a police investigation has revealed.
In dawn raids across Sicily on Tuesday police arrested almost 150 suspected mobsters, dealing a blow to Cosa Nostra bosses who are attempting to recreate the powerful cupola, or senior mafia commission, that once ran the island.
Warrants were issued against 183 people, 36 of whom were already in custody, for crimes including mafia-type criminal association, attempted murder, extortion, drug trafficking and illegal gambling, police said.
More than 1,200 officers were involved in what media reports said was the biggest operation against the Cosa Nostra since 1984.
Crippled in the 1990s by the arrest of its chief, Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Cosa Nostra has bounced back, making huge profits from cocaine and protection rackets.
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“Cosa Nostra is particularly active and doing business and trying to rebuild its army,” Palermo’s top magistrate, Maurizio de Lucia, said at a press conference on Tuesday announcing the arrests. Young Sicilians growing up in poor areas continue to see bosses as “supermen”, he added.
Phone taps revealed that bosses still held to the Sicilian mafia’s traditional honour code. One of them told an associate: “Cosa Nostra? You are married to this wife and you stay with her all your life.”
Gioacchino Badagliacca, a boss from Palermo, was overheard claiming he was not in the mafia to make money but because of its “noble principles”.
De Lucia said his investigation showed that “you leave Cosa Nostra in two ways — by becoming a turncoat or dying”.
Many bosses were less than happy with the commitment shown by young recruits, the investigation revealed. Giancarlo Romano, another mafia capo, was recorded saying: “The level is low — today they arrest someone and he becomes a turncoat.”
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He also claimed that today’s Sicilian mobsters lacked ambition, settling for selling “blocks of hash” when their predecessors had dealt with “shiploads of hash”.
Speaking on a tapped phone, Romano was heard advising a young colleague to “go to school, where you will meet doctors, lawyers — those who run Italy”.
He urged his fellow mobster to study the Freemasons, who “occupy the most important jobs”, and to watch The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 film depicting the mafia’s ties to politicians, based on the book by Mario Puzo.
In spite of Romano’s complaints, the Cosa Nostra is booming, having formed joint ventures in drug trafficking with the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, and the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, said Italy’s chief anti-mafia magistrate, Giovanni Melillo.
As in decades past, the criminals demand pizzo, or protection money, from businesses, and force traders to use their products, often at inflated prices.
In one example, investigators revealed how a clan took control of distributing mussels and other seafood to restaurants in two seaside villages.
Key to the gang’s resurgence has been its ability to smuggle tiny phones into jails to keep incarcerated bosses in touch with their clans, Melillo said. The investigation revealed how mobsters gave orders from their cells and even watched live on phone screens as enemies were beaten up.
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Chat groups have replaced physical meetings of mafiosi because of the risk of arrest: bosses use online nicknames like Bear, Nephew, Spiderman and Robert De Niro.
However, de Lucia said attempts by the Cosa Nostra to rise above being a collection of clans and to recreate the cupola, the overarching command structure of its heyday, were being foiled by the police.
Investigators were tapping the phone of Francesco Pedalino, a mafia boss, as he described attempts to set up a cupola. “They have tried to do it three times, and just as it is born, everyone is arrested,” he said. “Thirty years ago they did it and no one knew about it. Now, however, they know everything.”
