Antonio Salvo
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Antonio Nino Salvo and his cousin Ignazio Salvo were two wealthy businessmen from the town of Salemi in the province of Trapani. They had strong political connections with the Christian Democrat party (DC - Democrazia Cristiana), in particular with the former mayor of Palermo, Salvo Lima, and Giulio Andreotti. At the Maxi Trial against the Mafia in the mid 1980s, they were convicted of being Mafia members.
Salvo Lima arranged an unusually lucrative concession to collect taxes in Sicily for the Salvo cousins island (tax collection was contracted out by the government), in exchange for their loyalty to Lima and the Andreotti faction of the DC. The Salvo’s were allowed 10 percent of the take – three times as much as the national average of 3.3 percent. Subsequently, the Salvo’s expanded their economic activity to many other areas such agribusiness (lavishly subsidised by the European Union and Italian government) and tourism. They owned the Zagarella Hotel complex in Santa Flavia, near Palermo.
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[edit] Intermediaries between Mafia and politicians
The Salvo cousins acted as the intermediaries between the Mafia and its political counterparts. Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled in October 2004 that until the beginning of the 1980s former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti had "friendly and even direct ties" with top men in the so-called moderate wing of Cosa Nostra, Gaetano Badalamenti and Stefano Bontade, favoured by the connection between them and Salvo Lima through the Salvo’s. The judges considered that Andreotti had ‘underestimated’ the dangers posed by his proven contact with the Salvo cousins and Mafia boss, Stefano Bontade, before 1980.
The Salvo’s were the main contact to 'adjust' trials against mafiosi. "The 'normal circuit' for all problems that needed attention in Rome was: Ignazio Salvo, the Honourable Salvo Lima, and Senator Giulio Andreotti," according to the pentito Gaspare Mutolo. Andreotti always denied having known the Salvo’s. However, old news photographs are showing Andreotti with Nino Salvo at a Christian Democratic rally held in the Salvos' Zagarella Hotel complex in 1979.
[edit] Mafia affiliation
It was the pentito Tommaso Buscetta who revealed the affiliation of the Salvo’s to Cosa Nostra to judge Giovanni Falcone. However, in a confidential police report from 1972 about the Mafia in Trapani, the brothers Ignazio Salvo (born in 1887 and the father of Antonino Salvo) and Luigi Salvo (born in 1888 and the father of Ignazio Salvo) were indicated as the Mafia bosses of that area. The membership of Cosa Nostra was passed on to their sons.
Antonino and Ignazio Salvo were arrested on November 12, 1984, and later convicted of being Mafia members. It came out at their trial that when Lima was in Sicily he was chauffeured around in the Salvo’s bulletproof car. Later pentiti explained even more about the Salvo’s role as intermediaries between Cosa Nostra and politicians.
According to pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia, his boss Stefano Bontade told him that affiliation of the Salvo cousins should be kept confidential because of their position in business and politics. Contact with the Salvo’s were maintained by a restricted group of Mafia bosses, such as Gaetano Badalamenti, Salvatore Inzerillo and Bontade. After the murder of Bontade and the defeat of the moderate wing of Cosa Nostra in the Mafia war waged by the Corleonesi in the beginning of the 1980s the relation with the Salvo’s was taken over by Salvatore Riina. Although the Salvo’s were part of the loosing side, their political connections where too important to have them killed.
The Salvo’s were also involved in the murder of the muckraking journalist Mino Pecorelli on March 20, 1979. Buscetta testified that Gaetano Badalamenti told him it was the Salvo cousins who commissioned the murder of with the Mafia as a favour to Andreotti. Andreotti feared Pecorelli was about to publish information that could have destroyed his political career.
According to pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia, the Salvo’s were present at a meeting with Giulio Andreotti and Mafia boss Stefano Bontade to try to prevent the Mafia from killing Piersanti Mattarella, the president of the autonomous region of Sicily. Mattarela wanted to clean up the government’s public contracts racket that benefited Cosa Nostra. Mattarella was killed on January 6, 1980.
[edit] Decline
Antonino Salvo died of cancer on January 19, 1986, in a clinic in Switzerland. On September 17, 1992, the Mafia murdered Ignazio Salvo. He was a victim in a series of murders staged by the Mafia in retaliation for the confirmation of the sentence of the Maxi Trial by the Italian Supreme Court in January 1992. The sentence upheld the Buscetta theorem that Cosa Nostra was a single hierarchical organisation ruled by a commission and that its leaders could be held responsible for criminal acts that were committed to benefit the organisation.
The Salvo’s ally Salvo Lima had been killed in March, while their adversaries, the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino had been killed in May and July of 1992. Lima and the Salvo’s had failed to block the confirmation of the sentence and had to die as a message to Giulio Andreotti to act on Cosa Nostra’s behalf. However, Andreotti by then was unable and unwilling to do anything.
The Salvo’s were mafiosi, but did not traffic in drugs, did not kill anyone and did not take part in the 'ordinary' Mafia activities. They represented another, but not less important side of the Mafia. They were a central part of the far-reaching network of economic and political interests that dominated Sicily through decades and in which Cosa Nostra played an important role.
[edit] References
- (Italian) L'impero dei Salvo
- Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (1995) Alexander Stille, Vintage ISBN 0099594919
- Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia (2004) John Dickie, Coronet, ISBN 0340824352
[edit] External links
- All the Prime Minister’s men by Alexander Stille, The Independent on Sunday, September 24, 1995 (article on Andreotti, Lima and other political figures)
- Andreotti escapes conviction, BBC News, 25 July, 2003
