Antonio Salvo - Decline

Decline

Antonino Salvo died of cancer on January 19, 1986, in a clinic in Bellinzona in Switzerland. Ignazio Salvo was sentenced to seven years in prison for criminal conspiracy on December 16, 1987, at the Maxi Trial against the Mafia. He was described as a key mediator between the Mafia and Sicily's political and business elite.

On September 17, 1992, the Mafia murdered Ignazio Salvo at Santa Flavia. He was a victim in a series of murders staged by the Mafia in retaliation for the confirmation of the sentence of the Maxi Trial by the Italian Supreme Court in January 1992. The sentence upheld the Buscetta theorem that Cosa Nostra was a single hierarchical organisation ruled by a commission and that its leaders could be held responsible for criminal acts that were committed to benefit the organisation.

The Salvos' ally Salvo Lima had been killed in March, while their adversaries, the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino had been killed in May and July 1992. Lima and the Salvos had failed to block the confirmation of the sentence and had to die as a message to Giulio Andreotti to act on Cosa Nostra’s behalf. However, Andreotti by then was unable and unwilling to do anything.

In 1993, when prosecutors in Palermo indicted Andreotti, the police searched the archives of photojournalist Letizia Battaglia and found two 1979 photographs of Andreotti with Nino Salvo, he had denied knowing. Aside from the accounts of turncoats, these pictures were the only physical evidence of this powerful politician's connections to the Sicilian Mafia. Battaglia herself had forgotten having taken the photograph. Its potential significance was apparent only 15 years after it was taken.

The Salvos did not traffic in drugs, did not kill anyone and did not take part in the "ordinary" Mafia activities. They were however a central part of the far-reaching network of economic and political interests that dominated Sicily through decades and in which Cosa Nostra played an important role.