Many mafia families have been forced to decrease the amount of protection money asked of business owners. First and foremost is the use of wiretaps and hidden cameras. “We are persuaded to believe that his capture represents that ultimate defeat of Cosa Nostra, but Messina Denaro doesn’t even enjoy legitimacy among many Sicilian bosses.”, “Messina Denaro is the last Mohican of the old mafia,” says Lari. Decimated by relentless arrests, weighed down by the recent economic crisis, short on cash and on foot soldiers, Cosa Nostra has become a paper tiger. Since Falcone and Borsellino’s deaths, the police have arrested more than 4,000 mafiosi, including 361 in 2011 and 300 in 2014. “Palermo like Beirut” was the headline splashed across the front pages of Italy’s leading newspaper. La Cosa Nostra is a classic Italian barber shop. Today we can say that the mafia – the one capable of killing magistrates and attacking the state – has been defeated.”. Today, more than 300 former mobsters are collaborating with authorities in Sicily. They are men who, once they’ve served their prison time and are back on the streets, put on airs as godfathers. “It is very probable that today’s mafia is the weakest in its history,” says Salvatore Lupo, a professor of contemporary history at Palermo University and a renowned expert in the history of Italy’s Cosa Nostra. Following the killings, the bosses from Corleone ordered champagne to toast the judges’ murders. 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Mob boss Giuseppe Greco, the boss of the Santa Maria di Gesu crime family, was seen being kissed on the forehead by mobsters in Palermo - a traditional gesture showing respect. He is not alone in his assessment. Since the mid-1990s, the number of homicides has decreased significantly. It’s just one of the many signs that today Cosa Nostra is the one on its knees. COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE UPDATE TWOMatthew (Matty) Madonna is 84 and would be prime fodder for COVID-19, but he's also a longtime mobster who made it to the pinnacle of organized crime in New York City -- and in July of this year he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murder. “The mafia of lost causes.” He wasn’t even able to recover objects that were stolen from his daughter. It’s just one of the many signs that today Cosa Nostra is the one on its knees. Today, the tonnes of cocaine on the streets of Palermo and Catania, as recent investigations have revealed, are moved by the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta. Gigantic masterpieces of street art on the buildings of Palermo, depicting mafia victims, have taken the place of pro-mafia slogans. All rights reserved. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Today, La Cosa Nostra cooperates in various criminal activities with different criminal groups that are headquartered in Italy. “Riina formally remained the boss of the Sicilian mafia until the day he died,” says Sergio Lari, former anti-mafia prosecutor who for more than 10 years was head of the Palermo anti-mafia directorate and lead investigator in the Falcone and Borsellino killings. It was a show of force unknown to Italy since the end of the second world war. Palermo has been reborn from the ashes of those bombs and killings. The wife of mafia boss Salvatore Spica, in a wiretap, complained to her husband: “I used €100 for my mother’s groceries, €200 for the dentist. Riina, who ordered the magistrates’ killings and another 150 murders, was arrested in 1993 and sentenced to life in prison. As the Cosa Nostra is finally brought to its knees, our reporter recalls his childhood in Palermo when the mob families felt free to murder at will. Lari believes that one of the most telling examples of the mafia’s current state of crisis is the drugs trade, “where we’ve seen an absolute monopoly on the part of Cosa Nostra transform into bilateral and subordinate agreements, often with the powerful Calabrian ’Ndrangheta”. Hundreds of visitors stop, in both directions, to leave flowers and pray. But at least the mafia bosses who used to drive fancy cars, buy lavish villas and feel arrogant enough to take on the Italian state, like the boss Dainotti, now move and die on a bicycle. Two of the most powerful La Cosa Nostra families—known today as the Genovese and Gambino families—emerged from Maranzano’s restructuring efforts. “What kind of bloody mafia are we?” asked Alfredo Giordano, a former mafioso from Palermo caught on wiretap. Welcome Traditional and Modern La Cosa Nostra. The truth is that this is no longer Cosa Nostra.”, Giovanni Falcone’s sister, Maria, says: “In comparison to yesterday’s bosses, who waged war against the Italian state, the new generation are chicken thieves.”. He took one bullet to the head and a second to the body. Cars buried in rubble, streets ripped open, dozens of photographers and police officers on the scene of what in my mind could only have been a natural disaster. Investigations in Palermo have even brought to light the technique of paying on an instalment plan, a strategy that, nonetheless, has resulted in arrests following reports from rebellious shopkeepers who are now less fearful of a weakened mafia and more confident that the law will be successfully enforced. Well, despite the current crisis of Cosa Nostra, that end has not yet arrived.”. Mafia bosses had placed 300kg of explosives under the motorway between the airport and Palermo. Maybe the end hasn’t come yet. Today the building sector in Sicily is at one of its lowest points: 73,216 people were made redundant between 2008 and 2017, and more than 5,000 businesses have closed, according to Italy’s largest trade union federation. Five days later, the government dispatched 5,000 military personnel to contain what by that point had become an all-out war against the Italian state. Two obelisks were erected as a memorial on either side of the motorway where Falcone’s car was blown up in 1992. Hundreds died in the early 80s. Pennisi -- a member of Big John Castellucci's "Brooklyn" crew, which is now based on Staten Island -- was a loyal wiseguy and a hardcore believer in The Life. The new regime banned the use of telephones, any association or correspondence with other prisoners, or meetings with third parties. Following the deaths of Falcone and Borsellino, the notoriously harsh prison regime, first introduced in 1975, was intensified, aiming at cutting off mafia inmates completely from their former criminal associates. The mafiosi who speak today used to drive Mercedes down the streets of Palermo in the 1980s. One of the mafia’s most profitable earners has traditionally been the construction sector, in which companies with ties to mafia bosses would earn millions by skimming contracts for bridges, roads and buildings. Some believe that the only true godfather capable of taking the reins of the Sicilian mafia is Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, who has been in hiding since 1993. I quickly realised that wasn’t the case – that a terrible murder had been committed. Page Transparency See More. One of the most important arrests following the magistrates’ deaths was that of Totò “the beast” Riina, one of the most ruthless bosses in the history of Cosa Nostra. Internal dynamics aside, he could never be the superboss for one reason: Matteo Denaro is not from Palermo, and that role is normally held by men from Palermo.”. What’s left? Today, the most respected bosses are all in jail or have died there. Judicial pressure and the crisis it has caused in recent years is something that mafia bosses have never experienced in the organisation’s history.”. 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