Palermo, blow to the clan of the "Scappati" who controlled public works and politics: 11 arrests
The investigation of the carabinieri on the mafia family of Passo di Rigano with the solid links with the American gangs
The Carabinieri of the Provincial Command of Palermo have carried out a precautionary measure against 11 people accused in various ways of mafia-type association, possession of drugs, personal aiding and arousing of extortion with the aggravating factor of the mafia method.
They would all be members of the Mafia family of Torretta, a municipality in the province of Palermo, which has always had solid ties with the New York mafia. The investigations coordinated by the DDA led to nine people in prison, one under house arrest and one to the obligation to stay in the municipality of residence.
At the center of the investigation, called Crystal Tower, conducted by the Investigative Unit of the Carabinieri and coordinated by the deputy prosecutor Salvatore De Luca, there are the mandamento of Passo di Rigano and the mafia family of Torretta, a small village with just over 4,000 inhabitants in the Palermo hinterland, always a mafia stronghold allied to the so-called "escapees", boss of the faction defeated by the Corleonesi of Totò Riina at the end of the second mafia war and forced into exile neg Use them. Raffaele Di Maggio, son of the historic mafia exponent Giuseppe Di Maggio known as "Piddu", who died in January 2019, would have an important role in the clan.
Loyalists of the boss were Ignazio Antonino Mannino, also with a directive and organizational function, Calogero Badalamenti who had been entrusted with control over the territory of Bellolampo, Lorenzo Di Maggio, known as "Lorenzino" released in August 2017 and subjected to the measure of special surveillance with obligation to stay in the municipality of Carini, Calogero Caruso, known as Merendino, considered a top figure of the "family" , his nephew Filippo Gambino and Calogero Christian Zito, who shuttled between Sicily and the USA. The investigation activities also involved two brothers construction contractors from Torretta.
THE LINK WITH THE USA. The investigations have documented the link with leading exponents of the American "cosa nostra" capable of conditioning, through their own emissaries, the criminal structures of the gang. The Torretta mafia would have inserted itself into the legal economic fabric, between construction, agriculture and cattle breeding through the direct intervention in the dynamics of buying and selling animals and land. The clan would also have controlled the public and private contracts not only in Torretta, where it would have managed to infiltrate the local administration by influencing and modifying the outcome of the 2018 municipal elections, until the dissolution of the Municipality in 2019, but also in the neighboring municipalities of Capaci, Isola delle Femmine and Carini, as well as in some districts of Palermo that belong to the "mandamento" of Passo di Rigano. The carabinieri have reconstructed the numerous confidential meetings organized in the campaigns to escape the controls of the police forces among the affiliates of the Torretta clan and in particular a summit that took place on the evening of November 21, 2018 in the home of Raffaele Di Maggio boss at the top of the clan, arrested today. The meeting was also attended by Ignazio Antonino Mannino, and Calogero Badalamenti.
At the end of September 2018, an emissary of cosa nostra americana was welcomed by the leaders of the Mafia family of Torretta. It emerges from the investigation of the carabinieri on the clan of Torretta that today has led to 11 precautionary measures. The man's stay in the area was covered, among others, by two businessmen brothers who, sharing the roles, would have taken him to the airport and would have guaranteed his stay in a luxurious villa with swimming pool in Mondello, giving him cocaine as a sign of welcome. In the period spent on the island, the emissary would have taken part in a meeting in the home of the boss Raffaele Di Maggio, on October 3, 2018 in Torretta, and in a second meeting in the municipality of Baucina (Pa). In the aftermath of the murder of the American mobster Frank Calì known as "Franky Boy", which took place in Staten Island (New York) on the evening of March 13, 2019, the carabinieri recorded a series of fibrillations among the mafiosi of the Palermo clan. In the following days, the son of one of the suspects left for the USA and during his stay in New York he met several people including the emissary who arrived in Torretta in September 2018. Returning from the trip, the young man told the climate of deep tension created on the American side, expressing his own assessments on who would take over from Calì at the head of the American mafia team. In Torretta, moreover, the carabinieri recorded the "first-hand" comments of some of the suspects who knew Frank Calì personally and who, at first, had feared that the episode could cause a dangerous escalation of violence in which other subjects would have risked being directly involved.
https://www.lasicilia.it/cronaca/news/p ... i-1277137/
