Involvement in Murders
According to the pentito Tommaso Buscetta, Di Cristina was involved in the killing of Enrico Mattei, the controversial president of the state oil company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) who died in a mysterious plane crash on October 27, 1962. Di Cristina’s men allegedly sabotaged Mattei’s plane, according to the pentito Francesco Di Carlo.
In 1970 the Sicilian Mafia Commission was reconstituted. One of the first issue that had to be confronted was an offer of prince Junio Valerio Borghese who asked for support for his plans for a neofascist coup in return for a pardon of convicted mobsters like Vincenzo Rimi and Luciano Leggio. Giuseppe Calderone and Di Cristina went to visit Borghese in Rome. Gaetano Badalamenti opposed the plan. However, the Golpe Borghese fizzled out in the night of December 8, 1970.
One of Di Cristina’s men, Damiano Caruso, was allegedly one of the killers of a Mafia hit-squad dressed in a police uniforms that executed Michele Cavataio on December 10, 1969, in the Viale Lazio in Palermo as retaliation for the events during the First Mafia War in 1963. Cavataio had been fuelling the Mafia war by killing members of both the warring factions.
Di Cristina was arrested but acquitted for lack of evidence in the second Trial of the 114 in July 1974. In yet another trial in Agrigento over a vendetta between Mafia clans in Riesi and Ravanusa over a refusal to stash a load of smuggled cigarettes belonging to Di Cristina. Again all defendants, including Di Cristina, were acquitted for lack of proof in March 1974.
Read more about this topic: Giuseppe Di Cristina
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