Mafia Affiliation
It was the pentito Tommaso Buscetta who revealed the affiliation of the Salvos to Cosa Nostra to judge Giovanni Falcone. However, in a confidential police report from 1972 about the Mafia in Trapani, the brothers Ignazio Salvo (born in 1887 and the father of Antonino Salvo) and Luigi Salvo (born in 1888 and the father of Ignazio Salvo) were indicated as the Mafia bosses of that area. The membership of Cosa Nostra was passed on to their sons.
Antonino and Ignazio Salvo were arrested on November 12, 1984, and later convicted of being Mafia members. It came out at their trial that when Lima was in Sicily he was chauffeured around in the Salvos' bulletproof car. Later pentiti explained even more about the Salvos' role as intermediaries between Cosa Nostra and politicians.
According to pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia, his boss Stefano Bontade told him that affiliation of the Salvo cousins should be kept confidential because of their position in business and politics. Contact with the Salvos were maintained by a restricted group of Mafia bosses, such as Gaetano Badalamenti, Salvatore Inzerillo and Bontade. After the murder of Bontade and the defeat of the moderate wing of Cosa Nostra in the Mafia war waged by the Corleonesi in the beginning of the 1980s the relation with the Salvos was taken over by Salvatore Riina. Although the Salvos were part of the losing side, their political connections were too important to have them killed.
The Salvos were also involved in the murder of the muckraking journalist Mino Pecorelli on March 20, 1979. Buscetta testified that Gaetano Badalamenti told him it was the Salvo cousins who commissioned the murder with the Mafia as a favour to Andreotti. Andreotti feared Pecorelli was about to publish information that could have destroyed his political career.
According to pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia, the Salvos were present at a meeting with Giulio Andreotti and Mafia boss Stefano Bontade to try to prevent the Mafia from killing Piersanti Mattarella, the president of the autonomous region of Sicily. Mattarella wanted to clean up the government's public contracts racket that benefited Cosa Nostra. Mattarella was killed on January 6, 1980.
Read more about this topic: Antonio Salvo
Famous quotes containing the word affiliation:
“Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather than achievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.”
—Phyllis Rose (b. 1942)