Legacy
Although a mafioso of minor importance from the province of Caltanissetta, Messina’s early testimony about the links between Cosa Nostra and politics was of crucial importance at the time. The knowledge about the inner workings of the top echelon of Cosa Nostra, he obtained from Giuseppe Madonia – considered to be the number two of the Mafia around 1990. He was a key witness for the prosecution against the Mafia in the province of Caltanissetta. On December 4, 1992 he appeared before the Italian Parliamentary Antimafia Commission led by senator Luciano Violante.
However, some of his declarations were far fetched. He claimed that there was Mafia Commission on a global scale, which has been discarded by most serious academics and law enforcement specialists. He also claimed Umberto Bossi and the League of the North, a political organization advocating the separation of Northern and Southern Italy, was a "creature" of the Sicilian mafia in order to set up a similar League of the South controlled by the Mafia.
Read more about this topic: Leonardo Messina
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)