IT MAY have been a question of mixing business with pleasure, Cosa Nostra style.
According to a report in yesterday's Rome daily, La Repubblica, Matteo Messina Denaro, currently the most wanted Sicilian godfather, may well have used the packed grandstand of Palermo's Renzo Barbera football stadium during a vital Serie A game as the perfect rendezvous for an important Mafia meeting.
Following the arrests of Bernardo Provenzano in 2006 and his designated successor, Salvatore Lo Piccolo, in 2007, Cosa Nostra is believed to have been seriously reorganised by Messina Denaro, who now functions as the “boss of bosses” in Sicily.
Reportedly very careful and discreet in his movements, Messina Denaro is believed to communicate with associates by way of cryptic notes which he burns within minutes of receiving them.
Perhaps it was his obsession with his own security which prompted the choice of the football stadium. After all, what could be easier than to pass unnoticed in a crowd of 60,000-plus people especially if, like thousands of others, you are wearing a Palermo team shirt.
Indeed, by all accounts, Messina Denaro does not even care for football.
A police informant has claimed that the Godfather attended the Palermo v Sampdoria Serie A game on May 9th. Played on the second-last day of the season, it represented a virtual play-off for the Serie A fourth place, a seasonal finish that guarantees a place in the lucrative UEFA Champions League. (For the record, the game ended 1-1 with Sampdoria going on to qualify for the Champions League).
Police believe that Messina Denaro, who comes from Trapani in western Sicily, was summoned to Palermo urgently by a number of younger Palermitan godfathers keen to flex their muscles, perhaps with a series of bomb attacks on carabinieri stations on the island and on the Palermo courthouse.
Messina Denaro is reputed to be something of a bomb expert, having been involved in the Mafia’s 1993-94 bombing campaign in Rome, Florence and Milan.
Police sources believe he warned his associates against the repeat of that 1993-94 campaign, arguing that it would bring too much “heat” on to Cosa Nostra by way of police surveillance. Mafia experts are taking the report of a meeting of the Cosa Nostra commissione at a football match very seriously.
Democratic Party (PD) senator Giuseppe Lumia, a former head of parliament’s anti-Mafia commission, said: “We’ve got to keep our eyes wide open and exercise the utmost caution. It’s vital that there now be a serious evaluation of these reports suggesting that Cosa Nostra wants to strike the state again.
“Matteo Messina Denaro is . . . a godfather who has contacts with the world of politics, high finance and the apparatus of the state and he is well capable of rebuilding Cosa Nostra.”