Rise To Prominence
The Piromalli-Molé clan was involved in a bloody feud with the Ventre-Carlino clan in the 1950s, in which Antonino Piromalli, a brother of Girolamo Mommo Piromalli, was killed in 1956. The clan rose to prominence under the rule of the brothers Mommo Piromalli and Giuseppe "Peppe" Piromalli. Together with Antonio Macrì from Siderno on the Ionic coast and Domenico Mico Tripodo, the boss of the city of Reggio Calabria, the elder Piromalli brother Mommo formed a sort of triumvirate since the beginning of the 1960s until the outbreak of the first 'Ndrangheta war in the mid-1970s. Their senior position was recognized by all other family chiefs and their advice was in most cases followed without protest.
When Girolamo Piromalli died of natural causes in 1979, his brother succeeded him as head of the clan. Since the mid-1970s, according to several pentiti, members of the Piromalli family and the Nirta family from San Luca rotated among themselves the position of capo crimine. In Gioia Tauro, blood relatives of the Piromalli long represented the interest of the clan in the city council. Peppe Piromalli was captured on February 24, 1984. At age 83, he died on February 19, 2005 and his nephew Giuseppe Piromalli succeeded him.
Giuseppe was a fugitive since 1993 and included in the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy until his capture in March 1999. While in the strict Article 41-bis prison regime he nevertheless keeps on conducting his business and direct the clan outside. The Piromalli clan tried to relax the strict regime for their boss. One of the plots was to deliver votes to Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (Il Popolo della Libertà, PdL) coalition during the election campaign in 2008 in return for a relaxation of Piromalli’s prison stature. Their go-between Aldo Micciché, a businessman who moved to Venezuela after being convicted of fraudulent bankruptcy in Italy, planned to fill in 50,000 blank ballot slips for Italian voters in Latin America obtained from corrupt officials. Micciché asked two leading members of the Piromalli clan to visit Marcello Dell'Utri – Berlusconi's right-hand man – at his Milan office.
Read more about this topic: Piromalli 'ndrina
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